Pacific NorthWest - August 9, 2015

Today we reached the furthest point west on our trip. We got up extremely early to do a sea kayaking trip in search of orcas. After we were on the water, our guide told us he’d been in WA for 4 months guiding and hadn’t seen a whale as yet. It would have been nice had he told us that before we paddled around an island for 3 hours! Oh well. We saw an eagle, harbor porpoise, and a couple of seals. We felt successful because no one fell out of their kayak.

When we finished, we headed to the little town of Anacortes for lunch. They were having an art festival so we got the added bonus of seeing street performers and local art. We wandered around for quite a while before we decided to get back in the car to head for the North Cascades park.

The park was another drive through park. It had numerous snow caps and amazing rivers and lakes. Actually, there are three dams in the park. The water is an emerald color. Simply gorgeous. We have taken picture after picture along this journey and not a single one captures the true beauty. We keep taking them though.

We decided to continue on to Spokane this evening to hopefully get some time in Glacier tomorrow afternoon. We rode through a little place that looked like an old west town. It would have been nice to find a place to stay and spend the evening there. But one draw back was that too many people were there. It was sort of a mini Gatlinburg.

It’s been another long night of driving. Fortunately Jennifer has done the majority of the driving in the last two days. Tony had another dud day for some reason. We’re all laughing at him as he’s the one usually making fun of us for dragging. I can only imagine the shock his body is in after all his London travels on top of all this driving. He hurt his back just before the trip and no amount of massage, stretching, or ibuprofen seems to be helping him. He just needs rest. Maybe in a week or so.

We have moments of crabbiness and then moments of belly laughter. We’re making new memories that one day will be reviewed in much the same manner as we’re rehashing our old memories now. The girls never remember much about our first west trip. All their memories are our memories regurgitated or pictures we took. Hopefully with them being older this time, they’ll remember.

We are all in need of some rest. I don’t think we’ll be getting any of that in the very near future. The schedule is quickening in pace it seems. We’re expecting to be back in Denver this Friday to pick up the truck. We haven’t heard from the guy on the progress at this point. I’m sure we’ll hear something tomorrow. We’ve mostly been in denial about those first 72 hours of the trip. These last few days we’ve managed to enjoy without incident. We continue to knock on wood hoping our good luck will hold out.

We’ve had a great time in the Pacific NorthWest. The parks are gorgeous, the people have been nice, the cities held different surprises, the ferry ride from one corner to the other was interesting, the weather has been beautiful, and we’ve crammed every day full of activity from sun up to sun down. I don’t think we could have seen or done anything more than what we have. But we have left some things undone so we’ll have to return. Later… much later.