We were expecting to hike in the Rain Forrest today, but, instead, the rain came to us.  We are both feeling a little ragged and longing for the ‘road to the sun’. We have decided to head back to Redding.

HOME! HOME! we feel like E.T.

Today we thought we were going to hike to the top of the world, Hurricane Ridge.  From that point you see a 360 degree vista of  Victoria, BC, Northern Seattle, Pacific Ocean, The Straight of Juan DeFuca, and Mount Olympus.  We did hike, but into a cloud or maybe it was heaven.  There were times I couldn’t even see Doug.  We saw deer and one very discriminating one that choose Doug’s Coors over Pepsi.

An interesting little town.  In the late 1800’s this was the port the where the China Clippers docked.  It was THE northwest trading center for the U.S. This was a thriving Victorian town until steam power replaced the sailing ships. This allowed ships to navigate Puget Sound under power.  At about the same time (turn of the century) the railroads finally made their way to the west coast.  Now large amounts of agriculture products and manufactured goods from America’s midwest could be brought to the new Pacific port of Seattle.  Port Townsend essentially became a ghost town overnight.  It was so quickly abandoned that the town could not afford to modernize and, therefore, didn’t tear down any of the buildings.

Today it is a tourist town with a downtown full of REAL Victorian buildings.  It is caught in a time warp. I read somewhere it was called the “Paris” of the US…….I don’t think I would go that far.

Doug and I are still speaking to each other.  No fighting either.  As you that know him know…you simply cannot fight with Doug.  He is a delightful traveling companion.  He makes sure that all systems are go and also make all the travel plans and is the navigator as well.  I am truly on vacation.   Do you know how hard it is to keep 400 sq. feet clean?  I can clean the whole coach almost without moving :  )

Although I would love to explore Gig Harbor more, we are moving up closer to Port Angeles today.

We spent most of one day driving through the North part of Washington close to the Grand Coolie Dam ( the largest dam in the US).  We are still amazed that this part of Washington is desert, dnot pretty or inviting in any way.

To continue on the “not so pretty note” we stayed at an Elk’s Lodge in Tacoma.  Our spot was next to the side of the building.  Inside there was a concert raging on with a band playing loudly.  They said it would be over bymidnight.  Did I mention that the front of the RV faces their container dump site?  The price was right and we were tired.  You won’t find nicer people than at an Elk’s Lodge though.

The next day was spent visiting with long time friends of Doug’s. First were friends from his Lamaze class when he and Benny were pregnant with Matt……Debbie and Robert Secombe.  They have kept in touch for over 30 years.  Debbie and Robert both have worked for American Airlines, he as a pilot and she as a flight attendant.  They currently live on Fox Island in a home built in 1908 that they have restored.  We get to see it tomorrow.  The evening was spent with a classmate from Stanford, Carl and Jude Mundt.

They live on Bainbridge Island in a home that is right on the waters edge with a spectacular view of Puget Sound.

As the crow flies, there home was only 15 miles from us, but with all the islands and bridges to traverse, it took us over an hour to reach their home.   We really thought we were imposing as they had just arrived home from a weekend of sailing their 40 foot sail boat.  Carl delighted us with the most delicious halibut dinner and Jude with a wonderful strawberry crisp.
A couple of very interesting things we learned…….Bainbridge Island was the real setting for the book Snow Falling on Cedars.  I remember loving that book.  After seeing this area, I think it will be a reread.  They, as a family also did a very interesting trip while their two girls were in 4 th and 7 th grade.  They swapped homes with three families in Europe, home schooled their girls and traveled around the world for 15 months.  As you can see, one evening with them was not nearly enough.

Yesterday we spent with Debbie and Robert.  We originally were going to spend the day taking a ferry and exploring Seattle.  I was a little under the weather, so we stayed at their house.  It was so nice.  Their home is on Fox Island and was built in1908.  It was originally built on the water but was later moved to it’s present location.  It is a little funky with many obvious additions that made it absolutely charming.  I loved touring every single room.  Robert is about 6’4″ and I am sure he has to bend some to enter a few of the rooms.  We also walked a little and saw several deer.  Debbie is a real animal lover and is involved with animal rescues.  There was a sweet cat in almost every room.

This is the only desert in Canada with temperatures in the 3 digits range last week.

We are in Lake View RV Park looking across the street to a private beach.  The surrounding area is desert like with lots of hills covered with vineyards. This morning I can see a group of women doing a boot camp on the beach.  Maybe I should go for a walk.  Actually, yesterday, Doug and I did a bike ride along this side of the lake after our short drive down here.  It is a very crowded area with a range of accommodations from resorts to seedy camping sites.  This park is tiered with 5th Wheels high above us.  Each of the sites are individually owned and most are here for the summer.  People get around in golf carts. We are considered “transients”.  This is a far cry from our camp site at Lake Louise and twice as expensive.  The girls would love it here.  If the wind dies down, we may rent a kayak this afternoon.

This is truly a gem in Canada and a place we would like to spend a few more days.  There are fresh fruit stand everywhere on the roadside.  We  would love to load up, but are not sure what will be confiscated at the border.  Cherries, apples, and grapes are the predominant crops.

The wineries primarily do reds in this area.  Had lunch with a view at the  NK’MIP  Resort. This is an Indian resort.  We have been told that this chief is quite an entrepreneur and has a beautiful winery, restaurant, resort, RV Park, cultural center.

We also went to an iconic place called Tickleberry’s for ice cream. One of their flavors was “sweet & hot”. ….the sweet was mango with a vanilla base and the hot was jalapeño pepper.  It was actually good when I tasted a small amount.  I am so boring that I didn’t buy it.  This little ice cream store was sort of out in the middle of no where. Doug and I walked in and it was swarming with people.  Doug had no choice but to wait in line :  ). (Doug here – I WILL wait for ice cream – always!)

Our final stop was a general hardware store that we were told we couldn’t miss seeing.

I was thinking, what is wrong with these people that a hardware store was a highlight of this town.  It was like an Ace on super super steroids, 5 levels full of everything your little homey mind can imagine.  We dropped $180 there 😁 (Doug here… WE Bonny, WE? I bought a single filter for the motor home – cost $12. Where’s Dr. Phil when you need him???)

Below are links to collections of photos I have selected to date. Click on each to see a larger version. Each gallery will open in a separate window on your computer. Hope this works!

Doug

Glacier National Park – One

Glacier National Park – Two

Lake Louise

Moraine Lake

Bonny and I have arrived into the land of WiFi and thus can now create the next chapter in our travel saga. This morning I will include some random photos from our adventures.

First the Grizzly Hunt:

Bonny and I rode a ski lift at Lake Louise into the mountains to walk a couple of trails. BUT things changed… when we met Olivia!

On the trail was Olivia – Bear 57! I took this photo at about 40 yards handheld and it turned out just fine! We were fine too. Olivia seemed more interested in digging in the dirt than following us.

Our hiking was curtailed and we of course retreated to a wonderful restaurant for dinner. Bonny still was wearing her Bear Spray canister in the restaurant! What a trooper!

Today we leave these magnificent Canadian Rocky mountains via the Trans-Canada Hwy.  These 250 miles are probably the roughest Doug has driven.  If I didn’t have such faith in his abilities, I would have “white knuckled” much of the way….winding mountain roads, steep grades, rain, cliffs, two lane only roads,  and roundabouts.  I personally enjoyed the entire trip.  It was beautiful entering the Okanagan Valley.  This is lake country and known for its great grape growing climate-surprise! A Canadian Napa Valley.  Picture green hills covered in grape vine and apple trees, farm land with corn, pastures with cattle and horses edged with beautiful blue lakes.

As usual we didn’t have reservations or the Internet to search, so as soon as Doug had cell service, he started to call.  Our first choice was full and it even had 500 spots.  That was a little worrisome.  We were referred to Apple Orchard RV Park which was way off the beaten path. It has only 10 sites and is surrounded by apple and cherry orchards.

We sort of missed hearing the train every 2 hours at night, but the coyotes were out there.  The sunset was awesome and Doug is in hog heaven with access to the Internet.

What a fabulous day!!!!  Doug and I seem to get started way to late in the day.  We did a “walk” along what they call the Bow River Loop near our camp grounds.  It actually was too warm and we returned to our site and enjoyed a few hours reading.  I hate finishing a good book.  I have done that twice already on this trip, so have decided to read The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett.  Fall of the Giants is the first of three and I only have 29 1/2 hours of reading left.  Yippee!! Doug is reading a couple of books and sometimes he reads to me.  I love it.

Around 4:30 we decided to do the gondola ride in the ski area.  It was so beautiful, you could see the glaciers above Lake Louise that are not visible from the lake.  The ski area is very nice.  Makes me wish I could ski.

The biggest treat of all was Olivia, bear #57.  We saw her below us on the lift and then were treated to watching her forge all around the perimeter of the lift, actually on a trail we had hoped to hike.   Doug got some very good photos of her.  However the “Interpreter” person seemed quite anxious with her bear spray and Walkie Talkie.  There was a similar electrified fence (as at the soft sided camp ground) there that seems to give the visitors (us) a sense of security she didn’t share. She repeated that this bear had gotten very frisky and social and that if she chose to go through the fence she would simply do so.  I was ready to hop on the lift and head towards home.

Side note…We met a young family and asked them where they were headed…..Redding… to participate in Bethel Church.

How lucky does one get….we escaped with our lives and it started to rain just as we exited the lift.  We decided to reward ourselves with dinner out (we see certainly couldn’t BBQ).  We chose a place at The Post Hotel.  WOW.  We were admitted because we had the bottoms of our hiking pants zipped on….no bare legs in this place…..grubby hikers in a fancy French chateau …so we had chateaubriand and a bottle of wine.  Before you start thinking I am really spoiled…we had soup from WallMart for the previous two nights.  What I want to know is, who really lives likes this?  Andy, we celebrated your birthday for you.

The rain is thumping on the roof of the RV as I write.  I feel sorry for all those campers that expected to sit around a bonfire on a balmy summer night and even sorrier for the tent campers. I also wonder what the mosquitoes will be like tomorrow.

The Ice Field Parkway

At last I fell like I finally got to see a glacier up close and personal.  We took the parkway about 90 miles north of Lake Louise just into Jasper National Park. Along the way we saw several glaciers throughout the day.  Doug discovered a new phone app called GPySy Tour that followed our position on the parkway and narrated a description and gave us anecdotal information about what we were seeing…..it was great. I think I finally understand the difference between a glacier and an ice field and have a far greater appreciation of how these beautiful Rocky Mountains were formed. I am now a junior geologist!

If we ever are fortunate enough to return, I would like to hike the Wilcox Trail very near the Columbia Glacier Field.  It is about a 3 hour hike with extraordinary views of the glaciers and mountains.  This was recommended by one of the guides at the information center that found the swarms of tourists as unappealing as we did.  There  were long long lines of people waiting to  board a bus onto the Athabasca  Glacier.  As you know, Doug has an aversion to lines….so that was never going to happen.

Our last stop on the way back to our camp was this beautiful and VERY rustic lodge called Simpson’s Num-Ti-Jah Lodge.  If we weren’t expected back at the RV, we would have stayed for dinner.  This was not the “try to look rustic look” but the real thing……I would have liked to stay longer.

We came back for a glass of wine with our new neighbors my from BC.  They have been traveling since 2007 and have seen all of Canada and most of the U.S. wintering in Arizona, Florida, and Texas.  They were leaving the next morning, so we had a lot to learn in a short time.  The weather also changed and we were treated to thunder and lightening and a downpour instead of a camp fire.

A short word about Doug and the RV……He has done a wonderful job of making all of this work…..I have yet to be without power, fresh water, warmth, or a clean windshield.  The many systems on this RV are mind boggling.  Always the teacher, he is determined that I understand the difference between amps and volts and propane and a generator……this may take a lifetime :  )

Today we went to Banff.  It is approximately 30 miles southeast of Lake Louise down the Trans Canada Highway.  It is much bigger than the town of Lake Louise and dominated by the famous  Banff Springs Hotel. This is a castle like structure several stories high overlooking the Bow River and the water falls down river.  The majority of our time was spent exploring the hotel and enjoying a dinner on an outdoor patio overlooking the valley.  The view was stupendous. As usual, by the time I was starting to look in the shops, they were closing. (Doug here – good planning on my part!)

The town consists of several bustling streets overflowing with tourists, just like us. The day was especially warm, according to our server, at 87 degrees with a haze spoiling the view due to a couple of fires some where in Washington and Oregon and another in Jasper.
For this reason, we decided not to take the gondola to the mountian top.  We were rewarded with the opportunity to watch two large deer that decided to hang out in the parking lot. They paid very little attention to the people gathered around.

Today started off late because of train noise and going to bed after midnight. We can’t seem to adjust to the sunlight at 10 PM! Anyway, took a wonderful bike ride along the Bow River which is right by the camp[ground. Upon our return to our campground we found we had new neighbors – all the way from Long Beach, CA!. What a coincidence. Anyway we had fun trading Long Beach stories. The two couples in their Bounder were returning from the Calgary Stampede.

About 8 PM we decided to go up to Moraine Lake just in the mountains above us. We planned to eat about 10 so we had time for a quick hike and pictures of the lake near sunset. Well, the sample pictures are below and Doug will publish the remainder when we have better internet access. It is a beautiful glacial lake with the same unique aqua coloring due to being fed by glacial runoff. See for yourself!

Doug and I have discussion “when does a walk become a hike?” We concurred that, if most of the women are carrying purses, it is a walk. Today we “walked” to the end of Lake Louise and then some. Beautiful. Doug’s pictures will prove that!

The lake is a chalky blue, almost milky in color from fine particles of rock that are scraped as the glacier moves down the mountain. The lake is fed by melting glaciers. The silt coming down the mountain is forming mud flats and the sediment that will eventually fill in the lake. The lake will become a meadow when the glacier ends. We wondered how long it will take before Lake Louise becomes a meadow but we will have to wait to get that answer. We believe that that is how Yosemite Valley was formed.

This trip has really shown us how dependent we have become on the Internet. So many of my ” why” questions go unanswered. Today we paid $2 for 15 minutes of Internet connection. Tomorrow they are having a special for $5 all day! You have to sit on the sidewalk or on a bench outside a small office called “The Depot” and have a wireless connection. Phone cellular data is crazy expensive. Verizon is selling us 100 megabytes ( megabytes now – 1/10th of a GB) for $25. That translates into $250 per GB. Our Verizon plan in the USA has 15 GB for $50 per month. If we bought that 15 GB here is would const us $3750 a month! I bet there is some fascinating governmental regulatory reason for this amazing  difference.

We have actually considered coming back into the U.S. as we travel west just so we can text or make a phone call. I have even resorted to writing an occasional post card : )

The bike trails here are great, not paved but compact gravel.

This evening we went to a Ranger presentation on the Year in the Life of a Grizzly. Did you know that an adult Grizzly eats the equivalent of 75 Big Macs a day (200,000 Buffalo Berries a day) during the 6 months they are not hibernating? In addition, the sow grizzly will go into labor and deliver up to two cubs during hibernation!  These babies are a little over 1 pound at birth and are hairless.  Apparently she wakes up for the big event. Cleans up the cubs, shows them the food supply and goes back into her deep sleep while the cubs eat and grow. When spring time comes, they exit the den and start looking for Buffalo berries and tourists. Incidentally these cubs are not twins but the grizzly has delayed implantation of embryos from potentially several mates!

They have done a lot here in the park to protect the bear population as well as the human population. This large camp ground has an area for “soft” side camping and another for “hard” sided vehicles, like our RV. The area for tents is surrounded by a very unobtrusive fence that is electrically charged to keep the bears out of that area ( or is there to keep the people in?) – remember Jurassic Park? Our area is unprotected since we can keep our food easily secured and we can stay up at night counting the bears. (kidding)  There is a train that comes near the park it seems every 2 hours day and night. We could not understand why the engineers seem to lay on the horn. Apparently the trains are the number one killer of bears in the park. Total number of bears counted is 60. The train is also the number one cause of insomnia and eventual psychosis in the campers, particularly if you are trapped inside of an electric fence for the night – !!

Another interesting thing they do here to protect the wildlife is called “twinning”. As we were driving on the highway into the park we noticed what appeared to be very short tunnels on the road. They are actually overpasses for the animals to get from one side of the busy highway to the other side. Does it really work, we asked? We were told that 10 species of large mammals use these. A great way to prevent road kill.

Doug accuses me of changing the subject without telling him where I am going with the conversation…..ATTENTION….. I am changing the subject and going back to our conversation with Harry and his wife (Black Foot chief) of July 4th. We asked them if referring to them as Indians was offensive or would they prefer to be called Native Americans. He was OK with either but prefers Native American. We also talked about all the controversy about current the trend of forcing team names to be be changed to be politically correct. Harry and Jana said the only term that is ” highly offensive” is the name Redskins. I was always taught the it was the Indians that scalped the white man. Harry said it was the English settlers that paid a bounty for Indian skins and scalps first, not the other way around….hence the name “redskin’. He also said that the price paid was different if the scalp was that of a child as opposed to an adult. It seems the brutality was horrendous on both sides. Doug and I have always thought this “Redskins” issue was silly bickering in a world with so many other important issues to address….talking to Chief Harry helped us see “Redskins” through the Chief’s eyes. A good day… a lesson learned and our opinion changed with knowledge of the origin of this name. The chief is fine by the way with Indians, Warriors, Braves etc. Those are honoring Native Americans. “Redskins” is a dark term of slaughter for bounty and the cheapening of human life.

How delightful it is to wake up surrounded by pine trees and sunshine. Yesterday, July 5th ,we woke up to rain, wind,clouds, puddles and mud. We weren’t very motivated to get started, so we didn’t. A late start and a border crossing into Canada yielded a beautiful drive through the prairie land of Alberta…..farming and ranching for as far a your eye could see.

Calgary is one of the biggest cities I have seen in a month and has a population of 900,000. It is very clean on the periphery with lots and lots of newer looking housing tracts. My question is why they were built so close together when there is so much land? I can’t answer that because we also don’t have any wifi access. Our phones and tablets are essentially off…the expense here for cellular Internet access is enormous. Could it be that Canada does not want its people glued to a machine? The subtle differences you see here are interesting. Everything is also written in French. You can’t buy liquor at Costco or WallMart. Our debit card was not accepted at Costco and their money looks funny! We arrived July 5th in Lake Louise about 9:30 at night but it was still daylight here in the north country!

Today we just explored and looked into what we want to see here. We tried to go to Lake Louise Chalet twice, but the traffic was so incredibly bad, we turned around. We will go early in the morning tomorrow. We started driving up towards an ice field, but got so enthralled with taking pictures of the wildflowers, that we never made it.

After an early dinner, we attended one of the ranger led shows in the camp ground on hiking “ToThe Top” of Temple Mountain. Great history lesson, safety tips, and humor. Our camp site is one of the nicest we have ever been in despite the fact that it only provides electricity 30 amps (occasionally), no available water and no sewer connection. The sites are all pull through that will accommodate a big rig and are situated at least 20 yards from your neighbor’s site with forest and pines in between for privacy….we hope to extend here at least 3 more days…we just have to ask daily for cancellations and be willing to move.