Hi there, welcome back. Our last
chapter ended on Saturday, August 6th, when we left Newport, Oregon
and traveled north along the coast to Tillamook, Oregon, and the
Tillamook Bay City RV Park. We spent the rest of Saturday in the
coach after getting set up. On Sunday we went out after lunch to do
a little exploring and some geocaching. For the first time since we
have been in Oregon we had a little bit of rain. Just sprinkles, and
the promise of more dampness, but rain nonetheless. We have been in
this area a couple of times in the past few years, so are somewhat
familiar with it. We were able to get nine finds for the afternoon,
as well as stopping at a couple of stores to do some shopping. There
was no more rain since we left the coach this morning. We got back
to the coach about 5:00, had dinner and watched TV the rest of the
night.
Monday, August 8th, my late mother's
birthday. She would have been 90 today. It was another rainy
morning, with the promise of off and on sprinkles all day. We went
out after lunch to do some shopping. We hit the two cheese places in
town first. The Tillamook Country Creamery Association, better known
as the Tillamook Cheese Factory, is a large campus on the north end
of town. The association of local dairy farmers has been around
since the turn of the century and makes world famous cheeses. We
watched the packing line from the viewing deck for a while, then did
some shopping. Fifty bucks later we were on to the Blue Heron French
Cheese store just down the street. This place carries a lot of the
more exotic cheeses, brie, bleu cheese, that sort of thing, that
aren't made at the Tillamook factory. Almost another fifty dollars
worth of stuff and we were on to Fred Meyers for basic groceries.
After our shopping we headed back to the coach and relaxed the rest
of the evening. Not surprisingly, we had grilled cheese sandwiches
for dinner, along with some great tomato and cheese soup we bought at
the Blue Heron. Great dinner.
Tuesday, supposedly the last day with a
big chance of rain. We left the coach after lunch and drove north
along the 101, just sightseeing and enjoying the day. We stopped in
a couple of the little coastal towns and went through some antique
shops and other shops. We went about 25 miles north of Bay City
before we turned around and started back. Along the way we stopped
at a few geocaches, getting five new finds. At one of the geocaches
we picked a bag full of blackberries. After we got back to the coach
we stayed in the rest of the day. That night, while watching
television, we had some ice cream with some blackberry syrup that we
bought the other day at the cheese store, and the fresh blueberries
we picked during the day. Yum!
Wednesday, August 10th, we left the
coach after lunch and drove to the fairgrounds in Tillamook for the
Tillamook County Fair, which opened today. It was a typical, small
county fair with lots of local companies in the commercial area, arts
and crafts exhibits, and lots of animals. We spent a couple of hours
walking around, checking everything out. We don't do the rides, but
we looked at everything
else. After fair we went back to the coach
and stayed in the rest of the day.
Thursday was another travel day. We
left the park about 10:30, did a quick fuel stop in Tillamook, and
then were on the road, headed north about 75 miles on 101. Towards
the end of the trip we passed through Astoria, Oregon and crossed the
Columbia River into the state of Washington. We arrived at the
Thousand Trails Long Beach park about 1:30 or so and got checked in.
This is a pick your own site park, as are most Thousand Trails, but
we were able to finally find a site where we knew we could get
satellite. All the 50 amp spots were taken, but it is cool enough to
make 30 amp work. We got set up and then settled in for the rest of
the day. The trips on 101 are tiring, what with the traffic, the
hills, curves and rough roads. We will be in this park for a full
week.
Friday, August 12th, we went out after
lunch to do some exploring of the Long Beach Peninsula and some
geocaching. The Long Beach Peninsula is an arm of land about 25
miles long, north to south, and five miles wide, east to west. It is
located at the south-western corner of Washington state, with the
Pacific Ocean on the west, the Columbia River on the south, and
Willapa Bay on the east. The Long Beach Peninsula is known for its
continuous sand beaches on the Pacific Ocean side, which run about 28
miles and are claimed by locals to be the longest beach in the United
States. Because of the fine beaches, it is a popular vacation
destination for people from around the country. U.S. 101 leads to
the southern end of the arm before heading back towards the east and
then north in mainland Washington. There is a single main road that
runs north, dead ending at the north end of the peninsula. There are
a couple of small touristy beach towns on the peninsula, including
Long Beach and Seaview, the town in which our RV park is located.
Long Beach is the largest town, at around 1,500 population.
The beach is open for much of it's
length to vehicle traffic, the only beach in Washington open to motor
vehicles. As part of our exploration we drove out on the beach and
recreated a photo we took in 2007 when we took our old Jeep Cherokee
on the beach. I also experimented and put our Jeep into four wheel
low drive, just to see if it worked. In eight years we have never
used the compound low. It did work. Yea! We did some geocaching
and were able to get a dozen new finds, along with one DNF, for the
af
ternoon. Since the last time we were here in 2007 was before we
started caching, this is all “virgin” caching territory for us.
After caching we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the
evening.
Saturday, August 13th, we were going
to drive over to Astoria, Oregon, the large city on the other side of
the Columbia River, but Jackie woke up feeling really bad after
coughing all night. She doesn't have much of a temperature and is
not sick to her stomach, so I think it's the same chest and head
congestion she seems to get frequently. She spent the entire day on
the coach feeling miserable. I was able to get some chores done that
I have been waiting for time to do, a few repairs, some future trip
planning, and just relaxing. We never left the park all day. Sunday
Jackie was still feeling poorly, so after lunch I went into town and
did the laundry. We had planned on doing it within the next day or
two, so I thought I would use this down day and get it done. After
laundry I went back home and we stayed in the rest of the day.
Monday, August 15th, we left the coach
after lunch to go exploring. Jackie was feeling only a little
better, but decided she needed to get out of the house after two days
of laying on the couch. We drove south and crossed over the Columbia
again, back to Astoria, Oregon. We drove around for a while, doing
some sightseeing as well as a little geocaching. One of the stops
was at the Astoria Column, located on top of one of the tallest hills
in Astoria. The 125 foot tall tower was built in 1926 with financing
by the Great Northern Railway and Vincent Astor, the great-grandson
of John Jacob Astor, in commemoration of the city's role in the
family's business history. Patterned after the Trajan Column in Rome
and the Place Vendôme Column in Paris, the Astoria Column was
dedicated on July 22, 1926. In 1974, the column was listed in the
National Register of Historic Places. The column stands atop
600-foot Coxcomb Hill and includes an interior spiral staircase with
164 steps that leads to an observation deck at the top. The spiral
graffito frieze on the exterior of the structure is almost seven feet
wide, and 525 feet long. Painted by Electus Litchfield and Attilio
Pusterla, the mural shows 14 significant events in the early history
of Oregon with a focus on Astoria's role including Captain Gray's
discovery of the Columbia River in 1792 and the Lewis & Clark
Expedition. It was built at a cost of $27,133, which would be
$362,840 in current dollars. Interestingly, Vincent Astor inherited
the Astor fortune from his father, John Astor IV in 1912 when Astor
senior died in the sinking of the Titanic.
The city of Astoria is the seat of
Clatsop County lies near the mouth of the Columbia River. The city
was named after the American investor, and one of the first U.S.
millionaires, John Jacob Astor. His American Fur Company founded
Fort Astoria at the site in 1811. Astoria was incorporated in 1876
and holds the distinction of being the first permanent United States
settlement on the Pacific coast and for having the first U.S. post
office west of the Rocky Mountains. The population of Astoria is
about 10,000. While we were exploring the city we were able to get
six new geocaches. After exploring we went to Fred Meyers for some
groceries and then went back across the bridge and back to the coach.
We stayed in for the rest of the night.
Tuesday, August 16th, we left the coach
about noon and drove into Long Beach for lunch. We had lunch at
Chen's Chinese restaurant, a place we had gone to when we were here
nine years ago and liked. Although I didn't remember the interior of
the place, we have been to a lot of Chinese places over the years, I
was not disappointed by the food. We talked to the waitress and she
told us that while the place has changed owners since 2007, they
still have the same chef. The food was very good, the service was
good and we left happy.
After lunch we drove north on the
peninsula, sightseeing and doing a little geocaching. We stopped in
Ocean Park, the northern most town on the peninsula, and spent some
time in Jack's Country store, a huge general store that has
groceries, hardware, sporting goods, household stuff, and just about
anything you can imagine. This was another place we remembered from
our trip to this area in 2007. we bought a few things, then
continued to explore. The weather was pretty crappy, overcast, foggy
and cool, but we did drive out to the beach on a couple of the access
roads. The beaches on the north end are WAY less crowded that the
ones down in Long Beach. Of course, it was not a good beach day
anyway. The Long Beach International Kite Festival was going on in
Long Beach, drawing a lot of people, even with the bad weather, but
we didn't want to walk out on a cold beach to watch kites fly. Nice
sunny day, maybe, but not today. After our touring around we went
back to the coach and watched TV the rest of the evening.
Wednesday, August 17th, we had another
stay at home day. Jackie still wasn't feeling well so we just stayed
in, did a few chores and relaxed. Thursday was another travel day.
We left Long Beach about 10:30 and started northeast towards Olympia,
Washington, about 120 miles away. The trip was pretty much
uneventful and we arrived at the Washington Land Yacht Harbor about
2:00. We quickly got registered and parked and began our setup. Our
first chore was to acclimate to the high 80's temps when we just left
low 60's. We only have 30 amp electric here, but eventually it
cooled the coach down and we were comfortable again. We didn't go
anywhere after we got set up. Jackie had ordered a new laptop
computer a few days back and it was waiting for us when we checked
in. We spent some time getting it running and starting to set it up
the way we like it.
Friday, August 19th, we left the coach
after lunch and took Jackie to an urgent care facility. We ended up
being there almost four hours. They diagnosed her with a bronchial
infection and gave her some prescriptions. We then spent another
hour at Walmart while they filled the prescriptions. We finally got
back to the coach about 7:00. The cats were angry, but got over it
when we fed them. We spent the remainder of the evening in the
coach.
Saturday was an errand day. We went
out after lunch and Jackie got a haircut, then we went and she got a
pedi, we went to the post office and we found one geocache. We
wanted to get a cache today because it was International Geocaching
Day and we got one of our virtual souvenirs for finding a cache.
After errands we went back to the coach. I went out a little later
and brought home some KFC for dinner. We relaxed with the TV the
rest of the day.
Sunday, August 21st, we had a relaxing
morning with the newspaper. After lunch we went out to do some
exploring and geocaching. Jackie still wasn't feeling all that well,
but she wanted to get out of the coach for a while. We drove down to
the Washington State Capitol complex in Olympia first. We have been
to Washington a couple times in the past, but never in Olympia. Like
many state capitols, Olympia is not a large city, only about 50,000
population. It sets at the southern end of Puget Sound, which runs
north past Seattle and eventually into the Pacific. We didn't go
into the Capitol building, but walked around some of it and explored
the grounds. Two of the three geocache finds for the day were on the
capitol grounds. We then drove around some other parts of Olympia,
stopping at the Farmer's Market in the waterfront district. We had a
fun, but relaxing afternoon and then returned to the coach for the
rest of the evening.
Monday, August 22nd was a stay at home
day again. Did a few chores but mostly relaxed. Tuesday was another
travel day. We were packed up and on the road about 10:30, heading
about 70 miles north to Bothell, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. We
arrived at the Lake Pleasant RV Resort about 1:00 or so and got
settled in and set up. We had expected heavy traffic today, but for
the most part it was pretty easy going. This is the same RV park we
stayed in the last time we were here in Seattle in 2007. That time
we left the RV in the park and went on a seven day Alaska cruise out
of the Port of Seattle. This is a very nice but a bit expensive,
park. We are parked backed up to the lake and, for the first time in
a while, have everything, 50 amp, water, sewer, and satellite that
works. Yea! We are here for a week so after we got set up we just
stayed in the rest of the day.
Wednesday, August 24th, we left the RV
park after lunch and went out to do some geocaching in the general
area of Bothell. We had a pretty good afternoon, getting seven new
finds. Unfortunately, our last two tries struck out, giving us a
couple new DNFs. We also came across some other geocachers at one of
the caches. After caching we stopped at a couple of stores to get
some supplies before heading back to the coach. We made the mistake
of being eight miles away from home at 5:00, so the rush hour traffic
in the big city held us up for a while and it took us 45 minutes to
get back. We then relaxed the rest of the evening. Thursday, we
left coach kind of late after lunch after doing a few chores around
the coach. I helped Jackie color her hair and did a couple other
things. As a result we only got one new find, and one new DNF in our
cache quest. We then went to Costco to stock up on supplies before
returning to the coach for the rest of the evening.
Friday, August 26th, we left the coach
about 10:30 and headed to downtown Seattle for some exploring and
adventure. We parked right near the Pike Place Market and had lunch
at a place called Seatown. I had a salmon patty sandwich and Jackie
had a Caesar salad with salmon. The food was good, but VERY
expensive, especially for lunch. We then spent an hour or so walking
through Pike Place. This is the place where they have a couple of
fish markets and they throw fish around among the employees just to
entertain the tourists. We then bailed the car out of the eight
dollar an hour parking garage and drove around a bit. The traffic in
Seattle is the worst I have seen since we were in New York back in
1999.
We finally made it out of downtown,
taking almost a half hour to go less than four miles, and arrived at
the Groundspeak Corporate offices, home of Geocaching. Most cachers
refer to Geocaching.com, but that is just the website for the sport.
The owner of the site, and the people who make caching what it is,
are employees of Groundspeak. This office was one of our “must
do's” for a visit to the Seattle area. We had registered a few
days ago for a “hosted visit” to Geocaching HQ as it is known to
cachers. You really don't get a tour, they keep you in a big
reception room, but there is a lot of neat stuff to look at. The
hosts told some stories and showed some videos, but basically it
wasn't much more than you would get if you just showed up during
business hours. We did enjoy the hour long visit however and are
very glad we went. We exchanged all of our travel bugs in the huge
TB hotel they have in HQ. After the visit we got a couple geocaches
that were just outside of the office building. We then began the
journey home during rush hour, not a pleasant experience. We got
back pretty quickly though and then had cocktails outside on the
shore of the small lake in the campground. We spent the rest of the
evening in the coach. Saturday we left the coach after lunch to do
some more geocaching in the north Seattle area. We were able to get
six new finds, one of which was our next milestone, number 8,200.
After caching we went back to the coach and stayed in and watched TV
the rest of the night.
Sunday, August 28th, we left the coach
after lunch to do some “drive-by” sight-seeing of Seattle. I had
no desire to go back to that traffic nightmare during the week, but
on Sunday it was much easier to drive around downtown and check out
the sights. We did the main part of Seattle and the area that
borders Lake Washington to the east. We were on the west side of the
lake, right across from Bill and Melissa Gates' 70 million dollar
mansion. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see it. We had a little
rain on and off all day, but it never really got bad.
After doing the area of Seattle proper
we drove north to the little town of Mulkiteo, basically a small town
were the Whidbey Island ferry docks. It's neighbor is the much
larger town of Everett, and Paine Field, where all the Boeing
jetliners are born. We drove around the field and looked at the many
airplanes lined up on the ramps around the buildings. After we got
there we found out they had tours. It was too late for us to take a
90 minute tour, but maybe next time. After Boeing we headed back to
the coach and relaxed the rest of the night. We chatted with our
neighbors for a while over cocktails. They are from Northern
California and are just starting long term RVing. Not full timers,
but long timers. We did manage to get three geocache finds while we
were driving around today.
Monday, August 29th, we went out after
lunch and spent a couple of hours walking around a little boutique
mall that was just down the street from the RV park. After that we
went home and relaxed for a while and then went back out about 6:00
to have dinner at a seafood place called Ivar's, which happened to be
right across from the RV park. Ivar's is famous for their clam
chowder, but everything they have is very good. After dinner we went
back home and relaxed the rest of the night.
Tuesday was another travel day. We
left Bothell about 10:30 and started east towards Moses Lake,
Washington, about 180 miles away. We made a fuel stop and arrived at
the Suncrest RV Resort about 2:30 or so. We quickly got set up for a
three night stay. We had been to this RV park back in August of 2007
when we held a rally for the Hundred Percenters Chapter of FMCA. At
the time I was the Vice President of the Chapter. It folded up a few
years later because of lack of membership and duplication of mission
with the Full Timer's Chapter. Since we had a long drive and were
pretty beat, we didn't go anywhere after we got moved in.
This move from Seattle marks the
beginning of the comings and goings of a couple of rallies for us, so
it is a good time to publish this chapter. The next episode will
detail our rally fun. Until the next time, I leave you with this
question to ponder. Why do people say “no offense” right before
they’re about to offend you? See ya soon.
