Lewis & Clark caverns tour

This cave was not discovered by Lewis or Clark. They did camp near here while they were exploring the Jefferson river in 1805.
The tour starts with a 1/2 mile walk up a paved trail that was built by the CCC. The cave tour is possible because of the work done by the CCC. The 3 mile road up to the trailhead was built by them. They carved over 600 steps in the limestone and blasted a 300 foot long exit tunnel. They were paid $30/month and sent on average $28/month home. The tour was very cool. We had to crawl or slide on our butts in a couple of places. There was some damaging exploitation for a few decades after the cave was discovered but it didn't distract too much from what we saw. When the CCC started work they discovered what is now the most spectacular room on the tour. It hadn't been molested by the earlier unregulated commercial tours. I rode my bike down from the top on a single track trail. I was a little worried about hot brakes. We move tomorrow. The weather has soured here.

Lewis and Clark Caverns SP Mt.

We are between Butte and Bozeman near I 90. There is a cave here. Tomorrow is the LAST day of cave tours. How's that for serendipity? There are bike trails and hiking trails and a river. We have decided to stop here for 2 nights and do some of those activities. I did have to call Directv because my receiver locked up and we were about to miss Rachel Maddow. We had to catch up because some of my Aggie buds insisted on listening to Rush and watching Hannity. Sad!

Riverside State Park, Spokane WA.

The river that this park is beside, is the Spokane river. It empties out of the Coeur d' Alene lake that's in Idaho. We have decided to do a couple of high mileage days and then take a couple of days off. Our definition of high mileage is something less than 400 miles. This is a CCC built park. We have stayed in many CCC parks over the years. They have a distinctive appearance. A lot of stone work is a characteristic. There are some primo bike trails and I was able to sample them for an hour this afternoon. We have no hook-ups at this site. The temp tonight should be comfortable so we shouldn't need heat.

Last full day in Anacortes

This place has a disk golf course that is borderline insane. It's built on the side of an overgrown mountain. We had a hard time locating the tees and a harder time finding the baskets. We did get some exercise. After the game we found ourselves in the vicinity of a point of land that overlooked the Anacortes boat harbor. It required a pretty good climb but we were already used to the terrain so we went up and took some pics. We ate lunch in a restaurant in the old part of the city. The MP is primed and ready for our trip east. We have looked at a route with some interesting stops and to hit those we have to go south some. Seattle is south. We are reluctantly going to drive through town tomorrow morning. Traffic should be horrible. The snow capped mountain in the pics is Mt. Baker (10781 ft)

Parting shot

Back at the MP

Travel days are fun. We loaded the cars, drove to the ferry landing, and 2 hours later we arrived back at Anacortes. After a brief stop at customs we went to Safeway for some supplies. We unloaded the car and moved back into the old girl. She didnt seem like she missed us much. The group said our goodbyes on the ferry. I heard Jeanne Begnaud tell someone that we had been friends for 46 years. That doesn't seem possible. You gotta believe her because she taught school for 37 years. Many thanks to Donna for her impeccable planning and to Diane for insuring that Jerry was awake and dressed every morning. It was a great trip, a fantastic visit, thanks to all. Jenny and I have a 3000 mile drive ahead of us. Lets hope the MP doesn't live up to her name. EASTWARD HO!

Recap day 5

We had nothing on tap today. Somehow we spent 9 hours out of the house. We drove into Victoria and visited a famous hotel. Then we took a water taxi to the fisherman's wharf and drank some beer,  then we did a tour of the British Colombia Parliament building, then we found a Pub and, well we did what people do in Pubs. I took a pic at the Parliament building looking up from the rotunda into the Capitol dome. Tomorrow we return, via ferry, to Anacortes. We will split up the group there. We are wondering how the MP faired during our absence. Our journey east begins on Wednesday.

Butchart Gardens

It was a fantastic garden. Not much else I can say. Here are a small portion of the pics I took. 

Daily recap day 3

We had a very early ferry ride to Friday Harbor on San Juan island. We connected there to another ferry that took us to Sydney,  British Columbia. When we arrived there we had to clear customs and then we drove into Victoria for lunch. Our rental house is a 30 minute drive from the city center. After we checked in I found a good trail to ride on. The house has some entertaining games. We set up the "corn hole" game that we found in the garage and I was able to totally humiliate the pathetic attempts of my Aggie colleagues to dethrone the invincible champion, that being me. Tomorrow we visit the world famous "Butchart Gardens".

Early morning ferry ride

Daily recap day 2

We took the inter island ferry to San Juan island (the largest island in the chain) and did some exploring. Tomorrow we have to get up at o-dark-thirty and ferry into Canada. We have to get off of one ferry and get on another. Yikes.

Daily recap

We did a kayak tour this morning with John and Jean. We decided to rent tandem yaks because we had never paddled them and we didn't want to unload and load our boats. We were on the water for 2 1/2 hours. Our afternoon excursion took us into a state park that has the highest elevation in the San Juans. It had really good views. We visited a waterfall on our drive down the mountain. Tomorrow we are thinking about getting on an inter island ferry to visit Friday Harbor on San Juan island.

Morning view from the deck

The group has assembled

We have made it to Orcas Island. Some of us have a kayak tour scheduled tomorrow morning. At this very moment we (the guys) are trying to convince the girls to leave a bar. Success!

Getting ready

Not much going on today. We did laundry, did the drive to the ferry landing and did our last minute grocery shopping. The car, which has been haphazardly loaded with biking and paddling gear, has undergone a major adjustment. We will probably need to use the 2 rear seats to transport Aggies so we are going to leave some of our stuff on the floor of the MP. The group will link up tomorrow at the ferry landing for the ride to Orcas Island. This pic is the MP's parking spot for the next week.

Anacortes Washington

We have reached the furthest west we can go. We started on I 95 and we finished on I 5.  Our route today took us over the North Cascades. The pics were taken during that portion of the drive. After we got checked in we split up. Jenny took the Forrester to Wal-Mart and I took the MP to have her oil changed. I washed the car too. Our plan is to button up the old girl and leave her parked here while we are staying in the San Juans and Victoria. That trip begins on the 20th. Tomorrow Jenny and I are getting our act together. We will be living out of our suitcases for awhile and that will require a small adjustment.

A chill day

Today was so chill that I almost forgot to do this. I had a ride this morning but nothing extraordinarily outstanding occurred. We pretty much hung out at at the MP. One thing.  It spit rain for 5 minutes as I was cooking dinner on the picnic table, forcing us to extend the awning. About the time we got it extended the rain stopped. That's the first rain in 80 days, and we were here to experience it. Wow! We move tomorrow to Anacortes.
I did find a car that would be totally safe for a first car for Aubrey. It's not drivable so the insurance would be low. 

Pearrygin Lake State Park WA

Short drive so we got a lateish start. The road we were on followed the Columbia river. There were miles and miles of Apple and cherry and pear orchards. All irrigated from the river. If it wasn't irrigated it was dead. We haven't seen any unwatered green grass since N. Dakota. The town near here is Winthrop. It's got an old west feel. The population is 390. There were at least that many cars parked downtown. We were one of them. I did a bike ride and took a few pics. We are here 2 nights.

Gingko Petrified Forest

I yakked on the Columbia this morning. Jenny stayed in. After that we visited the State Park visitor center. It was there we saw the mountain goats. After that we did a hike in the park to see some of the petrified wood. There are 30 tree species that are petrified. The park is named after the Gingko and that tree deserves some discussion. It is a living fossil. There are 200 million year old fossils of the leaves of that tree. It has been virtually unchanged since then. The female tree produces nuts that smell like vomit. The animals that it evolved with, that disbursed it's seeds, all went extinct. It nearly did. Some of the trees were growing wild in China in the 1600's and because of human intervention they survived. They are now grown everywhere. They are exceedingly tough and long lived. They are a popular urban street tree because they can handle the crud that that type of tree needs to handle. Our local nurseries only sell male trees for obvious reasons. One more interesting bit about the Gingko: There are 5 living groups of seed plants and the Gingko is one of them. The Gingko is the only one that consists of just one species.  It is not obviously related to any other living plant. Cool huh?

Wanapum State Park WA

This park is named after an Indian tribe. Their story is that they never fought with the white settlers, they were peace loving, so a treaty was never negotiated with them. Consequently, they were never given a reservation. They are now extinct or nearly so. What is the message that can be learned from this? Peace is overrated? I don't have any idea if there is a lesson but I'm pretty sure extinction is final. We are camped on the banks of the mighty Columbia river. There is a dam a little ways down stream so we are actually on a lake that is filled with Columbia river water. This park is part of Ginko Petrified Forest State Park. We will visit that part of the park tomorrow as we are here for 2 nights.

Paddling the Priest

Ohh! That sounds kind of kinky. (My apologies to Maggie). We got the yaks wet this morning. They have been strapped to the roof collecting dust since Quebec. We left on this journey on Aug. 1st. We are coming up on 6 weeks. The days, the parks, the towns are kind of a mish mash in my aging brain. Our goal has always been a get together with our Aggie buddies and their wives for a San Juan island vacation. We are just a few days away from that link up. Tomorrow we make another move a little further West.

Roosevelt Grove of Ancient Cedars

Todays adventure involved a 1 hour drive, 10 miles of which, was on a dirt road. The Forrester, which had been pretty gross, is now really gross. We even crossed over into Washington for a time. We had seen this place on the map and wondered what it was. This grove was set aside over 100 years ago. There are 2 large stands of old growth trees. The ancient cedars are not really cedars. North America doesn't have any native cedar trees. Cedars are native to the Mediterranean regions of the world. In Texas everyone calls juniper trees, cedar trees. The huge cedars in the grove we visited are really arborvitae trees. There are a lot of trees that are called cedars that are not. Sad. We took gobs of pictures. Too many. It was a really cool forest. The trees averaged 900 years old,  some are 2000. We have elected to stay here 3 nights. We are only a 2 day drive from Anacortes and we have 6 days to get there.

Priest Lake State Park ID

This park is in the 'panhandle' of Idaho. We are pretty close to Canada. The lake is pretty big. It's 20 miles long and 300 feet deep. It was gouged out of the bedrock by a glacier a few years back. Todays drive had some dense smoke but the air is not bad here. There are some biking/hiking trails and some points of interest near here, so we will be here for at least 2 nights. I took a few pics of the lake but it will be a Trump shoot posting them because we have to use the signal booster to get any signal.

West Glacier day 4

Yesterday we met a couple on one of our hikes that were staying in the town of Whitefish Mt. It sounded like a cool mountain town and it was only 25 miles down the road from the KOA. We decided to stay here another night and visit Whitefish, and we really hadn't given any thought to where we were going next anyway.  Whitefish has a ski area that becomes a mountain biking mecca in the summer. Jenny & I rode the chairlift up to the top and did a 4 mile hike back down. All today's pics were taken on that hike. On a different subject, we learned that yesterday set the record for the most number of consecutive days without measurable precipitation in Montana history. It hasn't rained a drop all summer. There is no rain in the forecast. This is interesting to me because East Texas has just had the largest rainfall event ever recorded and the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever measured has just come ashore in Florida. This seems to be an unbelievably inconvenient coincidence.

The view we didn't know we had

9 1/2 hours

There is a road that connects the east and west sides of Glacier NP. It's called the "Going-to-the-Sun" road. That drive is a major attraction. There are pull-outs and trailheads all along the 50 miles of that roads length. There is a fire burning near the roads western end and it is closed. In order to get to the high pass at the center you have to start on the eastern end. We are camped on the western end so we had to drive around the park to access the road. That's what we did. There was quite a bit of smoke but it was thin enough that we could see the mountains and some of the glaciers. What are called glaciers here would be laughed at in Alaska. They have been receding dramatically for years and are predicted to be gone by 2030. A weather system blew through here this morning and the wind has cleared the air quite a bit. We have decided to stay at least 1 more day. We don't have to be in Anacortes Washington until the 18th so we have time to kill.