OKAY TODAY IS.................................. "REALLY" THE DAY! (Day 15)

We sure are lucky,  we heard other horror stories of campers that were to leave on the same ferry as us.  The motor home behind us cannot get on a ferry for 3 weeks!  They are moving back to an island off the coast of the Alaskan mainland, so they have no choice but to take a ferry.  Now.....we are "real" happy to be boarding a ferry today and our closet/cabin is starting to look pretty good at this point.  Glad we made our reservations last January because that helped us to get the accommodations on the other ferry faster.

Oh......below is a picture of a penny I saw in a crack in the parking lot at Walmart yesterday.  At first, I just walked over it thinking...I have to bend over and dig out the dirty penny out of the crack.  Then from somewhere I heard the voice of my mother saying.............."S-u-s-a-n....find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck!"  My thoughts were..."oh yes...I don't think I should pass up the chance of some good luck after what happened yesterday with the ferry breaking down and of course the thought of that nut saying that today is the day the world will end at 6 P.M.!"  So I quickly picked up that lucky penny and you can bet that I will keep that penny in my purse the rest of this trip  :-)  maybe longer!

 The next time we touch land will be Tuesday in Haines, Alaska.

North to Alaska finally!

We would love to hear from any of our blogger friends and family.  If you wish...post a comment below any of the daily blogs.  If you have a question, I will get back to you when we have the internet.  A little bit of home is a nice thing to have when you're away from home.  NOW....off to the ferry and we're on our way. :-)

Today is the Day! (Day 14)

Today is really the day!  It's a beautiful, sunny day and should be perfect for sight-seeing.  They're calling for some rain possibly Saturday and Sunday so I hope those whales are out enjoying the nice weather today too.  Who is that nut on tv that is predicting that the end of the world is tomorrow?  I'm assuming he's wrong because he said the world would end in the 1990's and we're still here.  I know the world has to end sometime but...  we've waited too long for this Alaskan trip for it to end tomorrow.  So hopefully my blog will continue on Monday and everyone will be reading it in

good health :-)

OMG....TODAY "WAS" SUPPOSE TO BE THE DAY!  As I am writing to you...our neighbor knocked on our door and said that he heard that our ferry was broken down...we thought he was kidding and we laughed.  It was not a joke!  Right now I feel the world "is" ending!  Here I thought the only sick feeling I would have would be from being sea-sick!  We're trying to find out what is going on right now to see what our plans will be for our trip to Alaska.  We may have to drive.  Oh..... I so wanted to see those whales :-( I'm sure we can take a boat somewhere out to see the whales, I guess....boo, hoo, hoo......... 

Bear with me....now I have to do some venting!  Here we drove 2600 miles specifically to take this boat and now it's broke!  The only info is on their site saying that it has engine problems and won't get the parts until possibly Monday.  Doesn't say how long it may take to fix it or if we should make other plans.  It sure would have been nice to get a phone call or an emails with some idea of what is going on and should we make other plans.  We are all packed and were ready to leave for the ferry in an hour.  We gave our neighbors our frozen food and tossed the rest of any perishable food because on the ferry we would have had to shut off the fridge.
Everything is up in the air right now and we're pretty disgusted!

UPDATE...Bill finally got through to someone and we can get on another ferry tomorrow; but the cabin they have for us is not on the outside deck and had "NO WINDOW!"  So in other words....they have put us in a closet!  There is no other choice so I guess we make the best of it, even though the very thought of it right now makes me cringe.  If you have any good suggestions for survival in closet living, let me know.    Bill looked on the internet to see the ferry we would be on.  The name of our new shop is the "Taku" and hold about half the number of people.  The "Columbia," that we were suppose to take, holds 950 people. I guess it will be fine as long as we don't have to share our bed with any strangers. :-)

Now....back to "GOOD THOUGHTS!"  

Good Thought: found out about the cancellation before we left the campground and drove to the port just to find out the bad news.

Good Thought:  they were able to get us on a ferry tomorrow, even though we will sleep in a closet.

Good Thought:  we still have canned food and snacks, even though everything that was healthy to eat was given away or thrown away.

Good Thought:  we can just stay in the same campground and don't have to go looking for another site.

Good Thought: it's still a beautiful day, despite some minor changes of the day. 

Hangin' Out At the Campground (Day 13)

Today was kind of a down day for us....I don't mean downer of a day, just a day to get things down and pack for the 3-day ferry ride to Alaska.  The campground we stayed at was a nice,clean place with lots of friendly people from somewhere and on their way to somewhere else.  Interesting to hear their stories. 

This is Jack...he was the welcoming committee at the campground.

Our camping neighbors were from Florida.  They are heading to Fairbanks, Alaska to see their grandchildren and spend the summer there.  They have been at this campground for two weeks waiting for their passports to arrive because they need them to go through Canada on their way to Fairbanks.  Sounds like they live in their motor home because they said they will need to look for a winter home after Alaska.  I don't know if I could live my life in a motor home and wake up to new neighbors all the time. 

So we hung around the campground and did those things that still need to be done, even when you're on vacation.  Laundry was one of them..........

Someone forgot their clothes...not my size :-(

Our motor home has a shower; but 6 gallons of hot water doesn't last very long.....so a nice clean shower room is a welcome site for a 10-minute shower girl!  Ahhhhh...the comforts we take for granted.

There is now a black pin marking that someone from Tomah, Wisconsin has stayed at this campground.

Bill is checking out our route and making sure that we are heading the right direction, while Sue is finishing up...

the free buffalo wings from the campground luncheon.  Yummmmmm! 

Just in case I am sea-sick on the ferry tomorrow and can't eat :-)   

It Was A Ferry Fun Day! (Day 12)

Hey...we're from the Midwest, what do we know about the tide times!  We just assume that if you post a departure schedule for your ferry...you would know if there is going to be a problem with the tide being out!  It was late morning before the tide came in and the ferry could make its trips again across the bay.  We drove our motor home on and were lucky to be the first one in the row.  We were right in front and it looked like we could drive right off the boat into the water.  We didn't even have to get out of the motor home because we had the best seat on the boat!  It was beautiful and only took us about a 45 minutes instead of the 5-6 hours to drive around the bay and through Seattle.  Had we done that route, the title of my blog may have been "Swearing in Seattle!"  Instead... it was a relaxing ride on a ferry named Chetzemoka, named after the chief of the  Klallma Indians that inhabited this peninsula in 1851 when the first
settlers visited this area.

That gave us some more time to enjoy the sites of this quaint,
seaside village by the ocean.

Boats waiting to show anyone, Washington's scenic beauty and ocean wildlife. (whale-watching at the top)

Just standing by the dock...

the otter  put on his own little show and it was "Free:-)"

From a distance...this ferry doesn't look like it would hold 64 vehicles until you drive onto it.  Tight fit!

Do they really think we believe that those little wooden blocks under the front tires and that mesh net would keep this motor home on this ferry if the brakes failed?  Even before the ferry started moving, I told Bill my escape plan in case this motor home started rolling into the water. One should always be prepared :-)

 Just some beautiful and interesting sites before we called it a day.

 Question of the day for picture below..."Why did Sue cover her head when she saw this seagull?"

1. She had a pet bird that always pecked her on the head.

2. One should always shield one's head with a bird overhead.

3. She had flashbacks of the movie "The Birds."

Number 3 is the correct answer. 

Washington Wonders (Day 11)

This is the view out the front of our motor home at our campsite! (don't miss the mountain peaks behind the ship:-)  It's the Bay of Townsend that leads into the Pacific Ocean.  Wonder if that cruise ship is heading to Alaska.  There's a port here that has a ferry that goes to an island on the other side.  You can see the land in the picture and we realized that is where we plan to drive to tomorrow.   We checked out the cost to ferry us across and found out that the fare would be less than the drive of 250 miles to get there.  Besides...we could avoid driving through Seattle.  That will give us more time to spend around Bellingham, where we will catch the ferry on Friday to finally head to Alaska.  So this is how our day ended....a campsite on the water, ships cruising by and the sun going down.  Now let me tell and show you how our day started :-)

 Words cannot describe the beauty of the ocean...

it's easy to understand why people are so drawn to it.

Trees are gigantic here!  Not as wide as the some of the Redwoods of California; but they must compare in height.  They sure make you feel small next to them.  I have seen wooden bowls made out of burls that grow on trees...can you imagine the size of the salad that would be in this bowl made from these burls?

If you like driftwood....this is driftwood heaven!  Along the way we saw shops with sculptures of animals and other things that were made out of driftwood that was very creative.   Even the roots were used to make some very interesting and  artistic,creations....none of which would fit in the motor home.

Dueling Cameras:-)

     Had to throw this photo in...

do you think this trailer belongs to a  Packer fan? 

So....the day ended as well as it began.  Tomorrow we will load the motor home on a ferry like the one in this picture and be
on our way to Bellingham. 

Where in the "Fog" is Mount St. Helen's? (Day 10)

 We were so happy to wake up to a sunny day because we were heading up 4200 feet to see Mount St. Helen's.  This year marks the 31st anniversary of the eruption of the mountain and yesterday a new observatory opened  in memory of this catastrophic event.  At first,  as as we drove up Spirit Lake Rd., there seemed to be little evidence of any disaster.  However, the signs reminded us that many of the trees that we were seeing had been replanted in designated years.

 Shortly, as we ascended the mountain we could see the evidence of a blast that blew down 230 square miles of forests.  Trees still jam the rivers in places or lay on the ground like pencils in the direction in which they were blown down by the pyroclastic blast.  The water still flows with the gray color of the ash that we were told layered the mountain in places up to 600 feet,  

Okay...this is not good.  In the mountains the weather can change in a matter of minutes as you ascend.  By the time we got closer to the top it began to rain and then snow.  All this way to see fog?

We could see some of the mountain with a lot of fog. You never knew from minute to minute what you would see on Mount St. Helen's because the fog moved in and out constantly.  The newly-built observatory was great with some unbelievable views of the mountains (if you could see it all).  We don't feel bad because we heard a couple say that they were here 15 years ago and they couldn't see it then because of fog.

On the way down we got some better views of Mount St. Helen's and the sun came out again.  Yes...I did pick up a rock to add to my collection.  Love those rocks!  Can't wait to get to Alaska and Canada to pick up some more! :-)

Lewis and Clark Slept Here....and so did Sue Sherman (Day 9)

This was the end of Lewis and Clark's westward journey.  They landed their canoes here to spend the winter.  Two weeks later Lewis & Clark would be standing on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.  They spent the next 106 days (of which 94 rained) preparing for their trip back to St. Louis, from which their journey began over two years earlier. 

This is a replica of the dugout canoes that Lewis and Clark's men built in Idaho to travel the perilous waters of the Clearwater & Snake Rivers.  However, they found that they were easily swamped and hard to maneuver on the wide Columbia.  In an account written by Clark, he said that the side of one of the dugout's sides split open and the bottom filled with water.  The men, some of which could not swim, hung onto the boat until they were rescued.  "Wouldn't you think....knowing how to swim would have been a prerequisite for a job that would take them nearly 4,000 miles, many of those miles on WATER!  They ended up acquiring a canoe from the Chinook Indians that... according to Clark's account, was calculated to ride the waves and carry immense weight.

It was from these huge pine trees that the dugout canoes were made.. They would shape the hulls with axes and then burn the insides out with a smoldering fire. Clark wrote that they built 5 dugout canoes in 10 days, despite the fact that all the men were sick.  No sick days on that job!

This is a replica of the fort that Lewis & Clark and his men built to spend the winter of 1805-1806.  They named it Fort Clatsop after the Indians that inhabited the area and came to the fort daily to visit and trade.  24 men squeezed into 3 small enlisted mens quarters, Lewis & Clark shared a room and Charbonneau and his wife Sacagawea shared the other room.  Even though this is not the original fort, this replica was built in 2006 from the floor plan with demensions that Clark drew on the elkskin cover of one of his journals.

   This is definitely not a 5 star fort!  Where's the pillow?  the mattress?  the blanket?  Guess I shouldn't even ask if they have wi-fi.  You can never trust those travel brochures!