September 18 and 19, 2014  Thursday and Friday  Travel to Seattle Washington

We left Kalispell, MT early on Thursday am.  The highway followed the Flathead River and then the huge Flathead lake for many miles.  Wish we had taken some photos.  We had a short drive through Idaho.  Our friends from Pensacola, Roberta and Jerry, had told us Coeur d' Alene was a great place to stop.  We could see it would be but we were passing through early in the am.  Maybe next time.  It seems to be a lovely village/town nestled in among lakes and waterways.  Michelle's friend, Bob, sent us a photo of a golf course there that has a floating green...you have to take a boat to it to putt I suppose.

Coeur d' Alene, Idaho   Source: Internet photo

Neither of us had ever been to the state of Washington.  I envisioned lush greenery and apples hanging everywhere.  But, eastern Washington is anything but...it is a desert.  It reminded us of southern Montana but instead of rolling prairies, there were miles and miles of plowed fields.  Seems they grow a lot of taters in eastern Washington.  And, the wind was blowing.  This made for a dry and very dusty several hours of driving.  In fact, it reminded us of our dust storm Arizona days back in the early 70's.  We were hoping we would break out of it before our destination of Moses Lake, WA.

At Moses Lake we did break out of the rolling dust clouds.  This little town is surrounded by a lake and we got in pretty early.  We are now in the Pacific Time Zone so we are two hours ahead of Pensacola and three hours ahead of Eastern time.

Upon check in we met a nice couple from the Seattle area who were returning from visiting daughter's family/grandchildren in Washington D.C.  Gregory told me "You are in the desert this side of the mountains. Once you get over the mountains tomorrow you'll be in the lush green part of Washington."

Friday

Off to Olympic National Park.  An hour past Lake Moses we crossed over the Columbia River.  We have been roughly following the trail of Lewis & Clark and we knew, once they found this river, they followed it to the Pacific.   Just past the river we started seeing some low lying hills and more and more wind generators.

Lib caught this shot of the "old and the new"; a barn with wind generators in the background.  All along the trip we saw hay being cut and stacked.  Everyone is getting ready to feed the livestock through the winter.  This barn wasn't being used but there were huge stacks of hay covered with tarp along the sides of the road.

The Interstate had little traffic compared to the roads back east.  We were told the Interstates out here had low levels of traffic.  This was true except on the passes where everyone seemed to bunch up as the big trucks slow to about 40 mph trying to make up the grades.  Most grades are 6% so for every 100 feet you travel you go up or down, 6 feet.  This is one of the things you worry about traveling out west and pulling a trailer.  We bought a book about the grades on the highways out here and, knowing that we were coming out west influenced the type of truck we bought to pull Cream Puff.  Fiona is doing a great job and takes the grades in style.  She also downshifts automatically when coming down the grades.  This keeps you from having to ride your brakes which can make them hot and fail.  This would not be good!  As we would learn, the wide-open Interstates we were enjoying would soon cease!

Approach to Seattle meant traveling over the Cascades.  It seemed we went up, up, and up for miles and then, we had to come down, down, down.  Here are some photos as we approached and drove over the mountains.

  Near the top

Starting down

 Soon we started down and finally we leveled out as we drove into the outskirts of Seattle.  Seattle is, of course, at sea level.  While we were ga-fawing at the downtown buildings, homes on the hillsides, and water everywhere, we suddenly realized we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic!  All southerners talk about driving through Atlanta.  Believe me, this was worse.  Imagine 3 lanes of traffic with another lane every half mile for merging traffic and about 2 feet between the vehicles.  Everyone going up to 40 (top speed) and then everyone stopping as vehicles try to merge into the three primary lanes.  Of course, we always seem to get in between 18 wheelers on either side of us.  Here it is very important that you not stray too much in one direction or the other because you have a very small margin of error.  Cream Puff is 8.5 feet wide; the maximum you can take on the highway without a "wide load" escort.

I suppose the worst case of traffic I've driven in was in Paris.  This was comparable because I wasn't pulling a travel trailer in Paris.  (I know several of you have driven in Paris where you know you drive by "intimidation."  He who intimidates the most, gets to make the turn and the other car has to come to a stop).  We were concentrating so much on not hitting the vehicles on either side of us we weren't really monitoring where Rhonda (help, help me, Rhonda..our GPS) was taking us.

I had studied the map of the Seattle area and I saw it was a city divided..by water.  But, I saw there was a way to avoid the water and get to the Olympic Peninsula, our destination,without water issues. This route was to enter Seattle and turn south down toward Olympia, the capitol, go west and then back north.  This would route you around the water.  Well, Rhonda had another plan and suddenly she announced for us to exit I-5 and enter the Ferry!  We both exclaimed, at the same time: "FERRY!"  I told Lib not to worry, there was no way Rhonda was going to route us, knowing we were pulling a trailer (Rhonda is a dedicated RV GPS).  "There was no way we were going on a Ferry dear.  I am in charge."  At the next stop sign we found ourselves in the line to enter the ferry!  Geez!

While we were both spoofed up and wondering if we should turn and flee, some of our fears were allayed by seeing other RVs and even 18 wheelers in line to the ferry.  These people have ferry's that are very different from the ones we took on occasion when we lived in Louisiana.  Those were miniature ferries.  This one was a hoss!

They packed us on the ferry and away we went across the waters of Puget Sound.  Another 50 miles and we arrived at Port Angeles, near the entrance to Olympic National Park.  And, we have wifi and phone service!!!

 Crossing Puget Sound on Ferry

The cars were crammed in and...

...so were we!