The next day, Sunday, we drove east to the town of Port Townsend, Washington. Port Townsend is one of the oldest towns in
Washington and sits at the “corner” of the Puget Sound, the inland bay that goes down to Seattle and Olympia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which leads west to the Pacific Ocean. This location made the area one of the first settled by the early pioneers as they arrived by sea. The town’s late-19th century look was very charming. Most of the buildings in the downtown area dated to the 1880's. On the bluffs above the town were some very pretty Victorian homes. We spent a couple hours walking around the downtown area looking in shops. At the same time we did some caches in the town, finding five. Port Townsend is also the terminal for the ferry that runs from there to Whidbey Island, about five miles north. We will be taking that ferry when we leave Sequim next week. After spending most of the day in Port Townsend we drove back to Sequim for dinner. We went to a restaurant north of town, on theshore of the Strait, called “3 Crabs”. The place was recommended to us by two different friends who were familiar with the
Sequim area. It was also recommended by the AAA book. We got there about 7:30 and found that the place closed at 8:00, however, they did take us in. The outside of place is kind of “fishing village” shabby, but the inside was nice, with big windows looking out over the water. The menu was almost exclusively seafood. We both ordered a variety platter, which you could get either steamed or fried. We both ordered steamed, but for some reason mine came fried. Since I was hungry and it was late, I ate it. The waitress did give us a free piece of pie for dessert for the mistake. Although the food was OK, neither of us thought it was worthy of the great praise we had heard. I don't think it was as good as Red Lobster. In addition, the service was only so-so. Perhaps it was because it was almost closing time on a Sunday - there was only one other customer in the place - but we wouldn’t go back and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone either.The next day, Monday the 1st of June, we did some laundry and caching in the area. We added 10 caches to our total. Among those we found were a series of caches put out by a local Boy Scout troop which were placed in various historical locations. Each of the caches had a long story about
the history of that particular site. We learned quite a bit about the early history of the area just from those caches. The next day we went to the Olympic National Park, located South of Port Angeles in the Olympic mountains. The park is very large, taking up most of the interior area of the Olympic Peninsula, however, there are only a few roads going into the park. We took the most popular route up to Hurricane Ridge. We went from sea level up to over 5,000 feet in about 25 miles. Up on the ridge there was still huge piles of snow in the parking lot. We also saw a large herd of deer grazing in a meadow right below the visitors center. Really pretty views of the Olympic mountains from the center. After visiting the park we went down into Port Angeles and visited the Elks Lodge there. The lodge was in a large beautiful old building right in the middle of 
downtown. The building was built in the very early 1900's and was five stories. The bottom floor was shops (providing income to the lodge) the second floor was the bar, dining room, and game rooms. The lodge room was on the third floor and the top two floors were apartments. The bartender told us that the apartments used to be for visiting Elks and for sailors who came to Port Angeles with the Pacific Fleet back in the early 1900's. It seems that the Pacific Fleet of the U.S. Navy would visit Port Angeles every summer with dozens of ships. In fact, the Lodge calls itself the “Naval Lodge” of Port Angeles. There were a lot of great old pictures in the lodge building of the fleet anchored in the Strait just off of Port Angeles. Even today the local Navy recruiter in town keeps an apartment at the Lodge. There is a surprising amount of interesting history up in this area. On our way home from Port Angeles we stopped at the Casino near Sequim for dinner and some gaming.On Tuesday, June 3rd, we visited the Olympic Game Farm, just outside of Sequim. The farm has a whole bunch of wild animals, including buffalo, elk, deer, several varieties of bear, yaks,
tigers, lions, zebras and other animals. The interesting part was that it was a drive-through type park. You drive around the park in your car and the animals wander around. Most of the hoofed animals, elk, deer, buffalo, zebras, etc., were free to roam right up to your vehicle and they let you roll your window down and feed them. In fact, they sold you a loaf of bread at the entrance for that purpose. They did require you to stay in your car. The animals are well adapted to visitors and will stick their head right in the car if you roll the window down far enough. The bears were in their own enclosures with electric fences, but you could drive to within three feet of them and they too would come right up to the fence and beg for food. The real predators, the lions, tigers and wolves, were in regular zoo-like cages. Since they never got fed, they were 
pretty uninterested in your passing. We had a great time. Turns out the park was founded in the 1950's by the Disney studios as a ranch for their movie animals. They also took in old carnival and circus animals. Many of the animals in the park today are relatives of these original “professional” animals. Today they are an independent zoological park. We had a great time driving through the park. Some California old-timers may remember the old Orange County Wild Animal Safari south of Santa Ana from back in the 1960's and early 1970's. That was also a drive-through type park, although much bigger and better populated with African animals than this one was. I went there a couple of times before they closed down.After our visit to the animal park we stopped by the Sequim Elks Lodge for a cocktail. There was a gal sitting at the bar who struck up a conversation. Shirley was her name and I would guess she was in her late 60's or early 70's. She was a member of the lodge and it turns out she spent 12 years as a cook on an ocean-going tugboat up in Alaska. She told a bunch of great stories and was very entertaining.
Wednesday morning we got up very early to leave the park in Sequim for our next destination. Unlike most travel days, we were packed up and out of the park by 8:00 a.m. The reason we were out so early was that we had to catch the ferry in Port Townsend at 9:30. We wanted to
take the ferry because if we took the ferry over to Whidbey Island, then drove North up the island and over to the mainland to I-5, we could get to Blaine, Washington, our next destination, in only 125 miles. The only other way was to go all the way back south to Olympia and up I-5, almost 275 miles. Plus, the longer route had us driving right through the middle of metropolitan Seattle. Because the Port Townsend ferry is relatively small in comparison to other Washington State ferries, large vehicles were required to have advance reservations. The ferry only has room for about 50 regular cars, so larger vehicles take up space and weight capacity and are therefore limited on each crossing. I called about a week before the day we wanted to cross and found that all three of the mid-day crossings were already closed to additional large heavy vehicles. We had a choice of either the 9:30 a.m. crossing or the 5:00 p.m. crossing. We didn’t want to be on the road late, so we took the early choice. Getting on and off the ferry was easy and the crossing only takes about a half hour. The trip was $55 for both the coach and the car. We would have spent more than that in fuel for the extra 150 miles of the land route, not to mention the additional three hours of driving. We arrived at the Beachwood RV Resort, just South of Blaine, by 1:00. This resort is one of our membership parks and was pretty big, although a little rustic. It is actually about 5 miles South of Blaine, Washington, and about a mile in from the coast. By the way, today, June 4, 2009, marks the 4th anniversary of our selling our house in Indio, buying the coach and living full-time on the road. Four wonderful years and looking forward to many years to come!On Friday, the 5th of June, we took a driving tour of Blaine and the surrounding area. Blaine is a fairly small town located right on the border with Canada. I-5 goes right up to the border to the Peace Arch Park then into Canada where it turns into Hwy 99. There is also a truck crossing a mile or so East of the I-5 crossing. After driving around Blaine we drove down the coast,
eventually getting to Bellingham, a large city about 20 miles South of Blaine. Bellingham is the first big city you come to us you drive South on I-5 from Canada. It was also the only town with an Elks Lodge in the area. We went by the Lodge for a visit and found a very nice, friendly lodge. We had a couple of drinks and visited with a number of the members who were in the lodge. The bartender couldn’t find a lodge pin so one of the members who was there took two off of his hat and gave them to us. Very nice people. If you are an Elk in the area, be sure to visit the Bellingham Lodge. The next day we went out to do some caching, mostly in the Blaine area. We found 14 caches. One of the caches was in the Peace Arch park and we have a picture of Jackie with one foot in Canada and one foot in the U.S.Sunday, the 7th of June, we headed down to Ferndale, a small town between Blaine and Bellingham, for a Highland Games Festival. We had seen posters for the festival the first time we
drove through the area on Friday. The Highland Festival is, of course, Scottish and there were bunches of people walking around in kilts and other Scottish dress. They had a big area of booths selling merchandise (a lot of kilts and tartans and the like) as well as a big food court. They had a couple of bagpipe corps, including one from the Vancouver Police Department and one from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. They also had a number of folk dancers. In addition to the Scottish themed music and dancing they had a number of young adults participating in the traditional highland games. These included tossing large weights, either for elevation or for distance, tossing sheaves (20 lb bundles of hay) up and over a 15 foot bar, and, my favorite, tossing the caber, which is a large log. The idea is to pick up the log, which is about 
15 feet long, and tossing it forward so it makes a complete flip and lands pointed at 12:00 in relation to where you were standing when you threw it. The judging is solely on the direction the log is pointed when it lands. Pretty interesting game. While at the Highland Games I also learned the Clan my Scottish heritage goes back to, and what my Clan's tartan looks like. I have postitively traced through documentation that my mother's mother was Scottish. Her maiden name was Swanson and the census records from 1910 show that both of her parents (my great-grandparents) were born in Scotland. Swanson is a family name that belongs to the Gunn Clan. The Gunn tartan is sort of blue and green, similar to the one the guy in the bright blue shirt in the photo is wearing. Fun to know one's heritage. Monday we hung out at the coach and took care of chores. On Tuesday, the 9th we went out and did some more caching, adding 16 to our total. A good afternoon of caching. Wednesday we drove back down to Bellingham to do our shopping before we head into Canada.Thursday, June 11th - the big day. Our motor-homing becomes International! We left the park around 10:00 a.m. or so and, after a quick fuel stop so we had full tanks, we headed up to the border to enter into Canada. After about a 10 minute wait we approached the entry station and I handed the border agent our passports. He asked all the usual questions, how long would we be
in Canada, when was the last time we were here, what was the purpose of our visit, how much alcohol do we have, how much tobacco, do we have a pet, does it have a rabies shot, and do we have any firearms. All the things we expected since we studied up well anticipating our entry and wanting to cover all the bases. I declared all the booze we had left, basically a couple of liters of leftover open bottles of liquor and a six-pack of beer in the fridge. No tobacco, no guns, no mace, and the cat has a recent rabies shot. There was a big fifth-wheel from Arizona in front of us. He stopped at the booth for a couple minutes and then headed off down the road into Canada. For us it was, “please pull over to side and go inside the office”. Inside the agent first had me empty my pockets on the counter. Then he asked me what I did before I retired. Since my badge case was sitting on the counter for him to look at I said I was a retired cop. That started the, “then you have a gun with you, right?” No, I don’t have a gun, I know the rules. His response, “you said this was your first time here, how do you know the rules?” I told him, I looked on the internet. Two of them then proceeded to the motorhome, sent Jackie out into the office and proceeded to go through the coach for about ten minutes. I guess they finally decided that I was either telling the truth and didn’t have a gun, or they were tired of looking. The fact is, I normally do carry a handgun, but I left it with my brother in Nevada specifically because I didn’t want any problems at the border. I know what Canada’s attitude towards firearms is. They finally let us go. At least they didn’t charge us duty for the open bottles of booze.One thing I did find out AFTER we got the RV park was that during their search one of them took the keys out of the Jeep’s ignition - probably thinking they needed it to open the back hatch. When they put it back in the ignition they didn’t turn it to release the steering wheel lock. For the 15 mile drive from the border to the RV park the front wheels were locked and couldn’t steer. Fortunately, we didn’t go far or fast so there was no damage to the tires or the Jeep itself. Had we needed to go a hundred miles or so it could have been pretty bad. Anyway, we did get to the RV park in Surrey, BC, Canada and got settled in. Surrey is a suburb of Vancouver. After we got settled into the park we headed into town to take care of some chores. One was to get a few hundred dollars of Canadian money. The other was to get some Absolute vodka. We found a BC liquor store and found that the 1.75 liter bottles of Absolute were $56 each (Canadian of course). Two bottles were well over $100! Yikes.
On Friday we just got in the Jeep and took an all afternoon driving tour of Vancouver and the surrounding area. Vancouver and its suburbs are a huge metropolitan area and is VERY densely populated. You see dozens of huge apartment and/or condo buildings all over, especially in
downtown Vancouver. The traffic is terrible - there are very few roadways with four lanes and almost none with more than four. The whole metro area is built on a series of islands and peninsulas, so there are numerous bridges - bottlenecks to traffic. However, it is also a very pretty town. We found the China Town area and walked around there for a while. We also had lunch there at a Chinese restaurant. The food was good, and plentiful, but a little different from what one gets used to in the states. Vancouver is a very international town, with a lot of Asians. Even out of the China Town area it seemed the predominant races were Asian. There are also a lot of East Indians, so much so that there is a TV station in the area that broadcasts in the Indian language. In some parts of town you see a predominance of Sikhs - all with the traditional turbans. A very cosmopolitan area. What you didn’t see much of were blacks or Hispanics. As part of our tour we went to White Rock, a suburb of Vancouver, which had a Canadian Elks Lodge with a bar. In our research we learned that, unlike in the USA, very few of the Canadian Elks lodges have lounges or bars. In the whole Vancouver area (about 7 lodges), White Rock was the only one with a bar. We found the bar open and spent about an hour chatting with the locals that were there. We had a very good time. Unfortunately, the lodge had no lodge pin, so they will go unrecognized on our banner.Saturday, the 13th of June, we did some caching in the general area around Surrey. We found 13 caches and in the process hit our 800th find! Not too bad for a little over a year. We happened
upon a caching “event” at a local park so we got to meet some of the local cachers as well. Had a nice chat with one of the guys who hid a lot of caches in the Vancouver area. On Sunday, the 14th, we decided to visit the Vancouver Aquarium. It was a nice aquarium, although a little small compared to some I have visited in the U.S. We did see a week old baby Beluga whale swimming around with mom. This was the big attraction and the place was packed. We had lunch there and spent about four hours walking around looking at the exhibits. A very fun afternoon. After the aquarium we spent another couple hours driving around Stanley Park. This is a huge urban park located just minutes from downtown Vancouver. The aquarium is in Stanley Park. The park is on a peninsula so there is water almost all the way around it. It has every 
variety of sports field, several large restaurants, view points, and huge areas of forested land and miles of hiking and biking trails. The park reminds one of New York’s Central Park, including the big lake in the middle of it. Stanley park is actually bigger than Central Park with 1,000 acres compared to 843. Since it was Sunday, there were thousands of people at the park. One of the nicer parks we have seen. Stanley Park is the big green area to the North of downtown Vancouver in the photo from the postcard we scanned.Monday, the 15th of June is our last day in the Vancouver area. We decided to go caching again and managed to find eight. The numbers were sort of low because most of the caches were back in little wooded parks which are all over the Vancouver area. You look around and see a lot of houses and apartment buildings, but what you don’t see are all the little parks the cities have put in. Some can’t even be seen from the road, you have to park and walk a trail back between houses. Then you come out on this big area of woods and meadows, right in the middle of a housing area. We found it pretty amazing that there was so much open space in such a densely developed area.
Tomorrow we leave Vancouver to drive about 150 miles Northeast to a little town called Merritt. I know nothing about the town, only that it was a reasonable distance to drive and there were a couple of RV parks in the town. We will see what’s there when we get there. The big Canadian adventure continues. That concludes this episode of Travels with Roy and Jackie - until we have a chance to update you again, keep the faith and enjoy the road of life!
