July 27 - Last Day in Kalispell

Phil, finishing up the camper and truck washings.

We made the grocery store rounds and got gas for $2.70 a gallon (cheapest in a long, long time) at Smith's. We could not possibly get another thing in the frig. Phil is washing the camper and truck as I type. This campground allows that (which is unusual, especially for how cheap it is). I think we are going to get pizza for supper and then start organizing the inside for the move tomorrow. Although I will miss my toaster oven, microwave, wifi, and cable, I look forward to our week of roughing it. It is nice to have the change. We have enjoyed paying no sales tax on anything in Montana. I'm going to take a shower and then do a last load of laundry. By the way, yesterday got up to 91 degrees. Today the high has been 74 degrees (at 3:20 p.m.). I like that! If NOAA's forecast is right, we will have nights in the upper 40's and days in the low to mid 70's while we are at St. Mary's Campground. If you do not hear from me for a bit, it will be because we do not have access to wifi. It looks like we will have to each purchase an annual national park pass for Banff and Jasper National Parks' two weeks. From what I have read, the Icefields Highway (think that is what it is called) is going to be awesome. If we did not purchase the annual pass, we would have to get a daily pass every time we entered the park or exited and re-entered. The annual pass will be pricey, but we will probably never travel there again. It is cheaper than getting that many days' daily passes. Oh dear, I am rambling..... Have a good one! We still marvel at the beauty God has created!

Lake McDonald Lodge

We went back into Glacier National Park, west side, one more time. I wanted to go into the Lake McDonald Lodge and check out the back. It was really, really nice. I think I liked it better than Old Faithful Inn. It is smaller, but I liked it. There are a lot of small log cabins to larger house cabins there too. They have a general store there, restaurant in the lodge and a stand-alone restaurant, a post office, and place to catch the red Jammer tour buses. There is also a tour boat that gives a one hour tour of Lake McDonald from the dock at Lake McDonald Lodge. One thing that was a little surprising about the west side of Glacier is how few roads there are that are paved. The biggie is the Road-to-the-Sun Rd. We stopped at Walmart on the way back for the last time. Tomorrow we will shop at Smith's and Super 1 Food Store to finish stocking up for St. Mary and Canada. We leave here Wed. morning for St. Mary Campground in the east side of Glacier National Park. We will be there for a week. We have no idea if there will be a hot spot for internet anywhere near or phone service. We know we will take the battery out of the phone when we go to Canada.

July 24 - Two months on the road

We left Townsend two months ago today. We have enjoyed each day and look forward to more adventures. We leave here next Wed. for St. Mary Campground in Glacier National Park. We have enjoyed this campground and our campsite the most of all the private campgrounds so far. It is also one of the most economical (less than $25 a night). We will also enjoy our no-hook ups site at St. Mary's for a week. We hit a used book store and are ready for some serious reading! We will shop at Walmart and maybe Smith's to load up as much food as we can stuff into the frig and cabinets before we leave here. After St. Mary, we will head to the Calgary area for one night and then to Jasper for three nights. Then we head to Banff for 10 nights. That will be two weeks in Canada where we will disconnect our phone. I hope we will be able to hit some hot spots to keep up with e-mail. Yesterday Phil put some kind of quick disconnect on the battery, so when we connect the solar panel cord to the charge controller, he won't have to take off the battery cover. He also made an extension cord that he hopes will work. That will enable us to put the solar panel further back on top of the camper if that area gets more sun than the front.

This campground has a really nice stream/creek that I would love to paddle around in our raft. Phil does not want to go to all the trouble of blowing it up and then getting it back into the box..... I hope to talk him into it, even if I have to get all the air out and fold it to fit back into the box!

July 20 - back into Glacier

We went back into Glacier for the afternoon. We had not been able to find a park at Apgar Village when we went this past weekend. We found one and went in all the shops and walked down to Lake McDonald for a few more photos. Then we road up the only other road (other than Going-to-the-Sun Rd.) as far as the pavement went. Phil likes to avoid gravel roads, if possible. We did not see any animals, but I did get a few more wildflower photos. It was a nice afternoon. We are about to go eat lunch at a Mongolian restaurant here. I hope everything will not be spicy hot! If they have egg rolls, I'll be OK. LOL! Then we will go to Walmart to pick up a few items and a refill prescription for Phil. We are really enjoying the cherries here. We are waiting for the Flatheads to ripen to try them. We have had the Ranier and Bing twice each. We are getting more today.

July 18 - Apgar to Logan Pass

Another WOW day. I fixed a sandwich for each of us and packed some chips and drinks. The plan was to picnic somewhere in Glacier N.P. It takes about 30 minutes to get to the west entrance, just passed West Glacier. We headed for the Apgar picnic area. The tables by the river were all taken, so we just parked and took our chairs down to a nice area right by the water. The scene was beautiful and would have been very tranquil had it not been for millions of flies! Before I tell you something, I first must tell you that mosquitoes love me. I am four or five star dining to them. They have to be desperate to go after Phil. He says I am the best mosquito repellent he could get. OK, so back to today and the flies. We are sitting there. I am eating, and Phil is slapping himself silly trying to eat. I casually said, "The flies really seem to like you." He turned to me and said, "I must be the closest thing to crap they can find." It is just a good thing I had just swallowed, or I would have surely choked to death. I nearly died laughing.

When we finished lunch, we made a hasty retreat to the truck, and Phil decided we should drive up the Going to the Sun road for a little bit. Once we got started, we did not turn around until we got to Logan Pass, about half way. This is a VERY narrow road. The is no shoulder, and the wall of rock juts out in many places, making this quite a thrill ride/drive, especially when the shuttle takes up part of both lanes.

We saw seven mountain goats. Four were two moms and babies. On the way back, a mom and baby were going down the middle of our lane. Then we reached a snow slide (complete with rocks) that had covered our whole lane. With the goat jam, we had to just sit there forever. I got more goat photos than I needed. My dad had told me about almost running into one on a trail when he and Mom were here years ago. Dad, Phil wants to know if any of these are the one....hahaha!

It was a lovely day. We will probably take the shuttle from St. Mary's on the east side when we camp over there and ride it to Logan Pass and back. We hope the flies are not on the east side!

July 15 - Road to Kalispell

Flathead Lake - beautiful! There is a community/town called Lakeside that is gorgeous, right on the lake.

The campground here is nice, even has cable tv. We have not had any tv the last two places, although we had wifi. If I could only have one, it would be wifi! We are in a woodsy site, which I like. It is also a pretty large site for a private campground.

One thing Phil asked me if I had put in my blog is how much we are enjoying the cherries here. We have had Rainier and Bing, and both are delicious. We have gotten them for $1.99 or $1.98 a pound twice, and $3.33 once. We are 20 miles from the entrance to Glacier National Park (west side). It is also nice to be in an area with good grocery stores and a Walmart. We will stock up before we leave here.

We have found out that Smith grocery stores, Fred Meyer grocery stores, and Kroger are all owned by Kroger. They all carry Kroger brand products and accept a Kroger card. The gas is $2.73 at Smith's, the cheapest we have seen in a while! We also like that they have no sales tax (or haven't on anything we have purchased so far). Sweet!

July 13 - On the Road Again to St. Regis, MT

You can't tell much because the actual dam is almost hidden. It is a very tall dam!

This is the back of the Grand Coulee Dam.

This was the view we had from the back of the camper.

That dot is a head of a swimmer. It was in the 60's that day.

And we went from Pacific to Mountain time. I think I could be an early riser if I lived in the Pacific time zone all the time! On a secondary road in Washington before we got to I-90, a big black bear ran out in front of us crossing the road. Phil braked, and the bear and we were all OK. There were signs warning of deer crossing, but not a thing about bears crossing! Of course, it happened too fast for me to get a photo. The drive was a lot of climbing and descending. Phil is pooped. We rode by the Grand Coulee Dam. That is one big dam! We did not stop to get photos, but I shot them from through every window in the truck on the driver's side!
St. Regis is supposed to be a flyfishing haven. Phil said it is a float river. He may see how much it will cost to fish a day. We leave here Thurs. morning for a week in Kalispell.
I took a few photos at the campground in Winthrop, WA, that I will try to post. I wish we had gone downtown because it was the cutest thing I have seen. It is totally Old West looking. It was a long drive (with a mandatory stop at Cabela's in Post Falls, ID). We left at 8:07, and got here at 4:39 (or 3:39 Pacific time).
I cooked mac and cheese to go with the left over chicken nuggets I had fried last night. Then I made a blueberry cobbler to use up some sorry blueberries we bought in Bellingham, Washington. They were amazingly good in the cobbler. :-)

Winthrop, WA - July 11 and 12

This is a charming campground on the Pearrygin Lake. There is a state park right down the road, but they had no vacancies in their campground. It is 62 degrees here, and people are swimming, boat riding, tubing behind a boat, skidoing, sun bathing..... I am walking around with jeans, socks, t-shirt, and fleece. Also, the wind is gusting to 33 mph with steady breeze at 19 mph. Are these people crazy???? I saw a teenager catch a trout. That was cool. I took a photo. I am going to try to post some photos from yesterday's trip through the North Cascades National Park, but the internet here is so slow that I do not know if I can upload any. I could not yesterday (but I could on FaceBook). Go figure! Tomorrow morning we leave for St. Regis for two nights.

Larrabee State Park and North Cascades National Park

Sat., July 10 - Grocery shopped and went to Larrabee State Park because my maiden name is Larrabee. It was lovely. We hiked down, down and got some photos of the beach and water.
Sun., July 11 - We left Bellingham and the Pacific Ocean and traveled through the North Cascades National Park. Wow! The water was gorgeous, and the scenery was awesome. The beautiful color of the water is given by the sand that washed down from glaciers. The mountains are truly majestic and HUGE! The trees look like a tree version of a skyscraper. We arrived in Winthrop, Washington, and set back up for two nights here. They have a nice lake full of trout, but Phil is balking at paying $30 to fish for one day. I told him it would be worth it to get a photo where you could actually see the trout, but it is up to him. We do not have television reception here, nor cell phone. The cell phone can access the WiFi, though. Tuesday, we head to St. Regis, MT, for another two nights and then head to Kalispell, MT, for a week. We will "do" the Glacier National Park from there.

July 9 - A Whale of a Day!!!!!

Today was a God thing. I have always wanted to go whale watching, but never in a million years did I ever think I'd get to do it. On this whole trip, every time I see beauty or animals in nature, I feel it is God saying to me, "Child, I love you. This vision is for you." Today felt absolutely spiritual. The boat ride through the San Juan Islands was beautiful. Mt. Baker and the jagged mountains near it were beautiful.

It took two hours to get to the whales. We had already seen some harbor seals. I learned that they must get out of the water to warm up every four to six hours or they get hypothermia. They only have an inch of fat. They are called rock sausages when they are sunning.

After two hours, the first orca was spotted. With the boat rocking and my excitement, I took a lot of shots before I ever even caught a fin. Then more showed up. We were seeing L pod. There are three pods in the area, and today we got to see L pod and some K pod. J was way south of us today. The company sends a seaplane out every morning to spot where the whales are for the day.

If I needed confirmation that today was definitely a God thing, the naturalist who goes on all the trips and gives narrative and info of what we are seeing told us that today was the best day in two years. We saw more breaches and whales than she has seen in two years' trips. There was a baby born very recently. In some of my photos, I can see a smaller fin. She said the milk is the consistency of yogurt and the mother and baby do not sleep for the whole first month after the baby's birth.

Today will go down as one of my best, most awesome, thankful days! Thank you, Lord! It was a whale of a day!

July 7 - Whistler

My favorite day here! I am so glad we decided to go to Whistler. The Sea-to-the-Sky Highway is awesome! I took hundreds of photos(only 228). I took a lot were while traveling, so I got the bug blur in spots. Whistler Village was nice. We walked all around that and took photos. On the way back, we turned in to the Whistler Olympic Park about five miles or so from the village. That was really cool. We got to see where they had all the Nordic events like the ski jumping area, the bi-athlon and cross country skiing areas. They are dismantling all the platforms that held cameras and a lot of other stuff. There is cable lying everywhere. We had to pay $10 to see this, but it was worth it. When we were leaving, we noticed to cars stopped on the side of the road. We saw a little cub, so we stopped and took some photos. Then we took off again, and less than a minute later, there was a mom and two cubs. We took some more photos. We took off again, and less than a minute down the road, there was a yearling. We stopped and took some more photos. We never saw the mama of the first little cub. He was tiny, so he had to have been born this past winter. I am sure Mom was close by. In Whistler Village, we got to see a lot of ski runs on the sides of the mountains at Whistler. Whistler reminds me of Gatlinburg, just bigger.
On the way back, I took lots of photos hanging out the window. Phil stopped at the pull-overs, but there were few. We left around 9:30 a.m. and got home around 6:30 p.m., so we had a full day. We did not eat lunch until after 2:30. I was starving! We passed by an exit to a town that boasts it is the eagle capital of the world. I told Phil I could eat some fried eagle! Finally we stopped to eat. Phil had been wanted to eat at a White Spot Restaurant. There are a lot of them. I got Bishop Curry. It was awesome! Phil got a French Dip Beef Sandwich and fries, which he said was really good. It is not a good thing to go from a piece of cheese toast for breakfast until 2:30. I tend to get a tad cranky. The server asked where we were from. We told her, and she said she had just returned from Tennessee. She had gone to Bonaroo!!!!! Can you believe that???? So funny! She said she had never been so hot in her life. Isn’t humidity wonderful? It was actually quite warm here, too. It said 90 on the road, but in the shade it felt very comfortable.
It is just hard to believe what this place was like five months ago! I also was amazed at how far Whistler is from Vancouver. This evening, we will start putting stuff away and getting ready to pop down tomorrow morning. I hope we get across the border as easily as we did coming. It will be so good to get Wi-Fi in our camper, park the truck at the campsite, and not hear any trains! We found gas for $1.07.9 a liter today. That is 10 cents cheaper than around here or in Vancouver. Yeee-ha! The good old U.S.A.! We head to Bellingham, SA, tomorrow. Phil needs to get the oil changed in the truck, and I need to do laundry.

July 6 - North Vancouver Waterfront

It was the nicest day we have had here, for sure! Visibility was fantastic and the sky was blue, blue! We decided that we had slept too late to go to Whistler today and get back before rush hour, so we bought our one day Translink passes. We hopped on the bus to Lougheed where we got on the SkyTrain to Waterfront and hopped on the Seabus to North Vancouver. We arrived at North Vancouver’s Waterfront in time for lunch. We love Lonsdale Quay market and food court. We ate Chinese today and ate outside looking at all the activity in the harbor. It is a very busy harbor! There were freight ships coming and going, seaplanes taking off and landing, a paddle boat taking tourists, the Seabuses, and private boats going and coming. The seaplanes were our favorite thing to watch.
After lunch we took a long walk on the waterfront walkway. We then took the Seabus back to Vancouver, and we walked to Canada Place and around Canada Place. I read where that was where a lot of the media worked during the Olympics. I’ve got to look up the Vancouver Convention Center beside Canada Place to see what if anything went on there during the Olympics. I cannot imagine how crowded this place was during the Olympics or what using the TransLink must have been like then.
On the way back on the SkyTrain, we could see distant snow covered mountains. Then it looked like Mt. Rainier came into our sight. It was beautiful. It makes me long to go back to the Tetons and Yellowstone! Maybe we will. Who knows?
That was our day here. I hope yours was wonderful, too. If we can get going early enough, we may brave the traffic and go to Whistler on our last full day here. It is a two-and-a-half hour trip each way, but it is supposed to be a beautiful drive.

July 5 - Stanley Park and Downtown Vancouver

We decided to drive to Stanley Park because public transportation does not extend into the park. They used to have free shuttle service within the park, but they do not have it any more. It was lovely and had such a variety of sites and things to do within the park. I do highly recommend it to anyone coming to Vancouver. Most touristy things are very expensive - $35 and up. That has kept us from going to Victoria and doing a lot of other things. If we had it to do over, we probably would not have stayed a week. I miss the national parks in the U.S.A. Three more nights, and we will be back into the good ole U.S.A. I am looking forward to it. I miss my Droid, too. Vancouver is truly lovely with its location on the sea and surrounded by mountains where there is no sea. We made another stop at Home Depot on the way back to the campground to pick up something else Phil needed for the leaky faucet pipes(tubes). They were totally out of what he needed, so he picked up something else he hopes will work. He said he does not feel confident, especially after we bounce and bump on our road trips. I am praying it will do the trick.

July Fourth

Thank goodness we can get a few Seattle stations; otherwise, we would never know it was the Fourth of July! Happy Birthday, America! We miss you! As I sit here typing this, there are two foreigners using their computers. I can't tell what European language it is, but it is interesting to listen.
As we were eating lunch and deciding what to do for the afternoon (because it had not rained as was predicted), there was a knock on our door. The next door neighbor told us we had water running out the outside shower door. Long story short, there went the rest of the afternoon with two trips to Home Depot. I fried chicken and made macaroni and cheese for supper (two of Phil's favorites). He says there is still a slight drip, but it is not hurting anything. It is just annoying him. He is on his computer now trying to see if anyone else has had this problem and what they did to fix it. I guess all that bumping over all the torn up roads that are being prepared for paving has shaken things loose.
I think tomorrow we may go to Stanley Park, barring anything else going wrong. We will get the one day transit passes again. I wish you could get a week pass, but that is not possible.
So, I sit here counting my blessings on this day. I missed jail ministry tonight, but I have prayed for the team going in and the inmates. I pray the inmates find the freedom they need; that is the freedom Jesus offers us through His sacrifice. None of us deserve it, and if God were fair, we'd all be doomed. Thank you, Lord, for always being faithful and true to your Word!

July 3 - Burnaby Lake Trails

We went to Safeway and bought two days worth of food. We are trying to buy just what we need. We figure with rain in the forecast tomorrow, that we’d be eating in camper today and tomorrow.
After lunch, we walked to Burnaby Lake Park and walked about an hour and a half. I got some nice wildflower photos. We took the binoculars because it is supposed to be a good place to see birds, but we did not see many. It was good exercise, though. Both of us have been bothered by sinuses today. We decided this morning not to go out sightseeing because of the weekend crowds. We definitely want to see Stanley Park. I’d like to drive up to Whistler one day. Those each would require a day. We will have to decide what to do that third day. We may just go downtown and try to locate B.C. Place where they had the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics and several other things downtown.
Also, on the way home from Safeway, we saw a homemade sign for a warehouse sale of Olympic stuff. We went there and bought a few things at a great price. We had seen just a plain t-shirt with the Olympic logo for $36. The cheapest one we saw yesterday was $26. Today we got them for $10, and they were better looking! I love a bargain! Yesterday was sunny and warm in the sun. I think it got up to 72. Today, it has only gotten to 64.
Gas is expensive here. It is selling for around $118.1 per liter. The most driving we will do will be to Whistler, if we decide to go there. Otherwise, we would have enough gas to limp back into the good old U.S.A. to gas up and not complain that it is still much higher than back home.
I just cannot get over all the foreigners here. Even up in the lounge here in the campground where we get on the computer, I will hear multiple foreign languages. I heard on TV that the biggest population of immigrants are the Chinese here. I think I am hearing German right now. When we were waiting on a bus at the Capilano Bridge, there were two girls from Finland. They must have been college students. It is just interesting to a small town girl.

July 2 - Public Transportation Day in Vancouver

This is one of the SeaBuses

Grouse Mountain

View of North Vancouver - Radiance of the Seas cruise ship on the left.

The hillsides are covered with housing.

I did not hear a train after about 11:00 last night until about 7:30 this morning. I guess that is livable. We decided to try out the public transportation today and see if we could get around. We bought our $9 public transportation day pass and hit the trail. We first caught a bus that took us to a SkyTrain terminal.

We rode that to Lonsdale Quay where we caught the SeaBus over to North Vancouver. We then caught a bus up to Grouse Mountain. We looked around and found out it costs $39 plus 12% tax to ride the gondola up to the top. The price would include seeing a grizzly habitat (have seen them in their real habitat), a birds of prey show (have seen that at Dollywood), and a lumberjack show (which greatly interested Phil). We may end up going back to take the ride and going to see the lumberjack show. We’ll see.

We stopped off at the Capilano Suspension Bridge and got a brochure on that. That was $34. We just wanted to get a photo, but you cannot see the thing without going in. We rode the bus back to Lonsdale Quay and went into the Quay Marketplace. It has some retail shops and every kind of international food at their food court. We opted for a calzone(me) and pizza)Phil). We bought the grands Vancouver t-shirts.

I took some photos. It was neat watching the seaplanes take off and land. Also, the Radiance of the Seas cruise ship was docked near the SeaBus port. We saw large container ships in the harbor, too. It was just a neat day, and we had a good time.

The only glitch was when we got back to the bus terminal, and we realized that we really did not know which stop we should exit the bus. We kindly explained to the driver that we were from a one stoplight town in East Tennessee, and we did not know exactly how to tell him when we needed to get off and we did not really know where we were supposed to get off. He said he’d let us know and had us sit up front (reserved for the handicapped).

I know we want to go to Stanley Park one day. We learned that Whistler Mt. is about a two hour drive from Vancouver. Also, the Burnaby Lake, which is quite large, is very close to our RV park. It has a nice trail and is supposed to be good for bird watching. We are going to explore the Internet to see what else is out there for options. Heck, we could spend another day doing just what we did today. It was fun! The SkyTrain goes underground some, but I much prefer when it is above ground. Underground is loud. We said several times that the grands would have loved today - the bus rides, the SkyTrain rides, and especially the SeaBus rides.

July 1 - Canada Day in Canada

The campground in Lynden, WA, was within 10 miles of the Canadian border. The manager at the campground had told me we could not take any fresh vegetables or fruit, and no beef was allowed. So, I gave my three sweet onions, a mesh bag of garlic bulbs, a pack of lean ground beef, and a pack of angus beef hot dogs to the people in the office. When we crossed the border this morning, we went straight to the booth - no wait!!!! The young man asked us a couple of questions and looked at our passports, and we were free to go. He asked for our truck license plate number, if we had any mace, pepper spray, weapons, or firearms. He asked if we had ever been to Canada. Then he told us to have a nice visit. He did not even ask if we had potatoes!
There were miles and miles of Canadians waiting to get into the U.S. at the border. It is a holiday, Canada Day, and I guess they were headed “stateside.” After seeing the price of everything here, I don’t blame them! We had noticed that most of the people in the campground last night were from British Columbia. The license plates here in this campground are from everywhere. The neatest license was from Yukon. I have never seen one of those!
We had to go to the grocery store, since we had given away our possibilities for supper tonight. We set the GPS for Walmart. We got to where it said it was, but we saw no sign of a Walmart. There was a Safeway and a store called Bay. Finally we parked and went in, and it turned out to be a mall. The Walmart was a store on the second floor. It did not have much food, but it had some unique foods I had never seen in Walmart. They had Lychees in syrup and sweet mustard pickles, among quite a few other things I’d never seen in our Walmarts. We are in an Asian area because there is Asian and English writing on every sign. In Walmart, the language I heard the most was an Asian one. I do not know if it was Chinese, Korean, or what. We decided to go to the Safeway. I got a Safeway card, and we picked up a couple loaves of bread, hot dogs, and a small thing of light sour cream. They don’t have Oscar Myer hotdogs or any other brand I knew. I hope the ones I bought are good. We will find out at supper.
We do not get WiFi at our campsite, which was no shock. We will go to the lounge above the pool to see if we can get it there. If so, I’ll post this blog. If not, this blog will be the beginning of a combined blog and posted whenever we get WiFi. (It works in the lounge - where I am now.)
It is raining today. It has not stopped. The high is 61. It has been cool since the second day in Pendleton, and we have been back in jeans. I just love it! July in jeans. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
There should be fireworks tonight for Canada Day. I hope the rain stops, so we can see them.
We have been studying the public transportation. We can get a bus at the end of the street which will take us to a Skytrain connection. We can buy a one day pass for $9 which will get us on any bus, Skytrain, or Seabus. There is a good chance it will rain Sat. and Sun., so we will try to plan our sightseeing days on the other days.
I forgot to mention the train tracks - on just the other side of the campground. Our camper vibrates when one passes. When the first one came through, I thought it was a jet landing, and we had an air port nearby. Dear Gussy, I hope there are not many during the night or early morning! This place was rated the highest and is very expensive. We also had to park our car in a parking lot which is a pain in the rain. Oh well, if we can get on the computer after supper, it will go a long way making up for the trains…..I think!
I did not bring my camera to the lounge because I wanted to see if I could get online. Now that I know I can, I will post some photos tomorrow.