Back in the USA

We've now parked at the Evergreen COHO Escapee park in Chimacum, Washington. We had 2 nice days, but today it's raining. Good weather to add a few paragraphs to the blog.

Desert-like terrain at Spence's Bridge

The trip down through lower BC had a surprise in store for us. As we approached our stopping place at Spence's Bridge, the road began to travel through a valley. The valley got deeper and narrower, and the vegetation began to look more arid. When we arrived, the valley had very few trees, the Thompson River was bounded by railway and roads on both sides.

We spent a peaceful night at Spence's Bridge, named for the bridge builder in the mid 1800s. The bridge is still there, but closed to traffic. It serves as a footbridge, but I was the only person trampling on it that we noticed. A new highway bridge ½ miles south carries all the cars and trucks.

Happy Canadian Sunflowers

We found a little coffee shop that had a limited, but flavorful menu for dinner. The town appears to be shrinking, the last gas station closed 2 years ago. Supposedly there were episodes of big horn sheep invasions from the nearby hills, but they shied away from us. We didn't determine that there were any other attractions nearby.

We left the next morning traveling south and found that the valley got narrower and deeper, reaching a max at Hell's Gate, where a footbridge was installed to scare the visitors out of their wits. The rail lines still followed both sides of the river, now called the Fraser, but they traversed through several tunnels as they clung to the canyon walls. The highway had several tunnels as well, and eventually crossed back over to the west side of the river, where we began a long descent from the canyon walls down to the less rugged valley that delivered us to Surrey, just east of Vancouver.

View of Vancouver Waterfront

We had found a directory of campgrounds near Vancouver and selected one based on location, price, and the availability of wifi. The price and location were as promised, but the wifi was “in the office only”. When I complained that carrying my desktop computer to the office would be difficult, the manager placed us somewhat close to the office. I was able to get intermittent access, and Consuelo got her laptop to work if she leaned out the bedroom window.

We got parked in a really tight site, where the our slides touched the trees on both sides of the RV. We then went off to look for a Chinese place for dinner, and found an excellent one, the Jade Forest, which has the best hot and sour soup we've ever tasted. The orange chicken was outstanding, too. I went back the next night to get some to go, but they were closed on Wednesdays.

Vancouver Tour Bus

During the day Wednesday, we tripped into Vancouver to see what we could see. We decided to take the “Big Bus” tour, which promised 22 stops and we could get on and off where we wanted. We arrived by the Transportation Center, where the cruise ships park in Vancouver, and the railway station is. We bought a combo ticket for the bus and Vancouver Lookout. Like many of our days in the past 2 weeks, it started to rain.

We rode the bus for about ½ hour, noting that many of the 22 stops were at hotels where passengers might be staying. We decided to leave the bus at Granville Island, home of the Market where all sorts of fresh fruits, vegetables, seafood, and prepared foods for lunch could be had. We both tried some pirogis, and had a spinach and cheese croissant. There were also artists, jewelry makers, photographers, and other trades for sale there, so we wandered for an hour or so. We finally made our way back to the bus and finished the tour, going through Stanley Park, China Town, and Gastown, where we got on, where we got off. We shopped some of the interesting stores in the neighborhood and watched the unique steam clock signal the hour.

The Vancouver Lookout is a circular observatory perched atop Harbor Centre, right next to where we parked, so we strolled over there and took the elevator up some 20 odd stories. Despite the gray weather, we got a nice view of the city and the harbor. Numerous twitter like city facts and descriptions were posted under the windows around the turret, and there were some fascinating (to me) panoramic photos form the late 1800's and early 1900's in a gallery area. I was fascinated because the negatives for the images were the same size as the photos, one of which was 8 feet long. There was also an interesting collection of old movie clips of Vancouver playing on a TV, some of which they played side by side against modern clips.

Formal gardens at Stanley Park

We rediscovered the challenge of rush hour traffic on our way back to the camper, something we had not missed in our months of travel. The next morning, after Consuelo took a quick trip to a fabric store to trade in our remaining Canadian dollars, we packed out of Surrey, and in 15 miles had packed our way out of Canada. We drove about 20 miles east, guessing that the border crossing there would be less busy. Crossing into the US with my expired passport turned out not to be an issue, and there was no line at noon.

Our route took us down I5 through Bellingham, where we tripped off to the west onto Whidbey Island. We made our first ever stop at a Northern Lights casino to lunch, and found a great buffet there for $7.77 each. We paid for lunch, and kept the rest of our money on our pockets.

Appropriately named eating place in Vancouver

We had to take a ferry from the end of Whidbey Island to the Olympic Peninsula where we are now staying. We found a phone number for the ferry on the sign that said, “Reservations recommended”, gave them a call, and made a reservation for 9:15 PM. But they said we could wait on standby if we went to the terminal, which we did. As it turned out, we got on the 4:30 ferry for our ½ hour ride across the bay. We chugged through Port Townsend down to Chimacum, and got ourselves parked for a 2 week stay, something we had not enjoyed since Fairbanks.