Part II ~ CANADA

We departed Port Angeles on the Ferry “Coho” and arrived on Vancouver Island about an hour later.  We are visiting Canada for 26 days.  Fourteen of those days will be on Vancouver Island and the rest will be in the southern part of British Columbia.  That’s the only part of Canada we will be exploring on this trip. 

We arrived at the ferry depot and we were directed to the front of the line in the 4^th row.  After the 1^st row was loaded onto the ferry, they skipped rows 2 & 3 and then it was our turn.  Our row was all the RV’s, trailers and trucks.  It’s amazing how many cars and trucks they can fit onto the ferry.  There is a system they use to balance the load and only they know how it all comes together.  On this ferry we enter one end and exited the other end.  

It took us less than an hour and we were in Canada.  It was a slow process to exit the ferry because we had to go through customs.  They questioned us about firearms, drugs, mace, etc and fruit and liquor.  Yes, we had liquor and we have apples…from Costco.  Oh, well, “Costco is okay” he says, “as long as they are not hand-picked from backyard trees.”  We are now officially in Canada, Vancouver Island that is.

Day 10 - 20 ~ WASHINGTON STATE

We spent 11 days in the State of Washington.  The evergreen state.  We were visiting friends in Gig Harbor and exploring Olympic National Park before boarding a ferry to Vancouver Island.

 

Gig Harbor (Aug 17 - 21)

We stayed in Gig Harbor for five days.  Our friends of 35+ years, Bonnie and Mike, live here and we saw them several times during our stay here.  We are having our mail forwarded to these friends so we can also pick up our mail; important stuff like Netflix and People magazine.  We also revisited some of our favorite sights while we were there.

We stayed at the Gig Harbor RV Resort, the only RV park in this area.  This will be our 5th or 6th time here and each time we have to fight to get a decent site.  Most of the guests here are full time or seasonal and of course they have all the best sites.  The rest of the sites are in the upper level of the park where they are too close together, too short, uneven and just bad sites.  For the last few visits we were able to be in the lower level as with this visit.  So I am happy.  

The weather has also changed.  No more fog!!  But there is a heat wave going on now, so the temps are in the high 80's, low 90's.  However, this is the evergreen state and there are trees and shade everywhere and in Gig Harbor, there is a cool breeze coming in from the bay...so again, I am happy.

  

Bonnie and Mike have a beautiful home in the hills overlooking the Carr Inlet (part of Puget Sound). We sat in comfort on their deck, visiting, drinking wine and looking across the water and watching some beautiful sunsets.  What a life.

Northwest Trek Wildlife Park

This is a 725 acre wildlife park in nearby Eatonville.  It is home to more than 200 animals that are native to the Pacific Northwest.  We started out with a naturalist-guided tram tour in a 435 acre free-roaming area.  It was a beautiful day with high temperatures, but had a cool breeze as we rode on the tram and later as we walked among the evergreens seeing the other sections of the park.

  Caribou at the tram station ^                              Female Mountain Sheep

Moose w baby

Seattle

We spent a very hot day in Seattle.  Really hot. . .  in the mid 90’s!  First we visited the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum.  A magical place and one of our favorite places.  We enjoyed a nice lunch in the Collections Café where several of Dale Chihuly collections are kept in glass covered boxes embedded in the tables we ate on.  Collections such as bottle openers, pocket knives, ink wells, alarm clocks; 28 collections total. 

                 Collections Café ^                                   Plastic radios

 House trailers

After walking through the magical world of glass, we still had 2 hours left on the parking meter so we decided to walk several blocks to Pikes Place Market.  How long can these blocks be??  Just like San Francisco right…well maybe, but not in 96 degree temps with high humidity….big mistake.  We made it but we ran out of time.  So Dave returned to get the car and would drive back to pick me up.  I wandered through the crowds looking for someplace to get a cool drink.  I did get some nice pictures of the beautiful and inexpensive bouquets of flowers they sell there.  

^ Interesting street corner statue - the arms moved up and down.

Shopping in Gig Harbor

In Gig Harbor we strolled the main street along the harbor.  There is a great view of Mt. Rainier from this street.  Years ago there were a lot of great shops here, boutiques, unique shops, galleries, cafes.  But now there are only a few shops.  How disappointing, but we saved some money on this day.  The Christmas Shop survived and is still there after many years and we found two nice galleries.  Artist owned, just like the one I am part of back home.  Had a nice conversation with the people on duty.

Poulsbo

On our last day in Gig Harbor we traveled 45 minutes with our friends to visit the harbor city of Poulsbo (incorporated in 1908) on Puget Sound.  Poulsbo is also known as the "Viking City".  It has colorful shops along its main street and on the day we visited, there was a small arts and craft show on the waterfront.  The money we saved at Gig Harbor was spent here. 

Could not resist taking a picture

Olympic Peninsula (Aug 22 - 27)

For six days we explored Olympic National Park and other areas on the Olympic Peninsula.

Lake Quinault

We were based at a small RV park at the Rain Forest Resort Village alongside Lake Quinault for three days.  This RV park is primitive, but we had water and power and believe it or not, free WiFi.  We had bought a ‘range extender’ for wifi signals the last time we stopped at Costco.  This was very helpful in getting a signal at our campsite.  But it was weak and the signal dropped often.  But it was good enough to get our e-mail and keep up with facebook.  We had a nice view of the lake from our RV site and we saw some nice sunsets.

We spent our time here relaxing, having some tasty meals at three different lodges in the area and doing some hiking.  

Swallow nest.  This lodge had several of these nests.  
While we were having lunch we watched a battle happening between 
several swallow parents and crows wanting a bit of lunch.

One 1.6 mile hike (see red circle on map below) that started a few yards from our campsite had the WORLD’s largest Sitka Spruce tree.

Tree sap or a face with a hat

We visited the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center on the west side of Olympic National Park and did another short hike; the Spruce Nature Trail.  We walked through Spruce forests and some dense vegetation and had a close up view of a Roosevelt Elk enjoying a meal.

A row of Sikta Spruce and Western Hemlock straddling whats left of their 'nurse log'.

Roosevelt Elk

Port Angeles

On the north side of Olympic Peninsula, we spent another 3 days exploring the National Park and other areas along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, before getting on the Coho Ferry to Vancouver Island.  We stayed in Port Angeles. 

  

We are staying outside of town at Elwha Dam RV Park on Elwha River.  The RV Park has new owners, and they are doing a lot of improvements on this place such as brand new comfort station (very nice) and laundry room.  But the majority of the guests staying here are permanent.  Our assigned site is in the middle of a row of permanent trailers.  It feels like we are parked in someone’s yard.  However, our neighbors a very quiet and we hardly see them.  And our stay here was very pleasant.  

 

Nearby is where Elwha Dam was.  It’s gone now.  In Sept of 2011 removal of both of the Elwha River Dams began.  This was the largest dam removal project in the world ever undertaken to enhance a salmon run.  All non-native plant species were removed; the river channels are now restoring to their original routes with wetlands replacing the current reservoirs.  Two days after the dams were removed, salmon and other species of fish were seen returning to travel nearly 70 miles to the heart of the Olympics.

On our first morning we woke up to the strong smell of smoke and the sky was covered with a haze.  It lasted until late afternoon when the wind came up and blew it all away.  There was a forest fire (called the Hayes Fire – how appropriate) going on in Olympic National Park in the Elwha Valley (we were just there – but it was not near where we were staying).  We drove alongside of Lake Crescent and stopped at Lake Crescent Lodge to view the lake. 

The lake is covered with smoke from the fires nearby.  Do you see Slowpoke?

We did not do any hiking on the north side of Olympic National Park, but we visited the Sol Duc Hot Springs area.  We drove west on 112 and took in views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

There is a whale out there - see that dark line in the middle of the pic? 

Just above the boat. That's the whales's back.

On our last day we drove east to visit Sequim and Port Townsend.  In Sequim we checked out the farmers market and some other shops and had a nice lunch at Alder Wood Bistro.  In Port Townsend we checked out some more shops.  Found a nice bead and yarn shop, but bought nothing.

Our next destination will be Vancouver Island where we will explore the island for about two weeks.  See you there!