Ecola Beach

We drove a few miles south of Seaside to Ecola State Park. We were going with Bob and Julie but we decided to take the dogs, so we took Roxie with us in our car and the took their 2 dogs, Odie and Scruffy, with them in their truck. After leaving 101 and entering the park we drove down a small winding road through thick, lush Forrest for about 3 miles. Then we came to the beach.

We had been told that dogs may be off leash if they are under voice command, so we pretended to be in charge and the dogs had a good day. They played with other dogs, swam, ran and generally were having a dog day. Roxie managed to find something smelly to roll in so that she needed a bath later.
Roxie just loving this better than even food.

OH, No, here's Roxie leading the little guys astray.



The beach was beautiful on this sunny afternoon. We watched the surfers, and the surf. A lighthouse and large rocks were in the water in the cove ahead of us.


this was really a beautiful site.


There were a lot of surfers out today

Seaside, Oregon

We are spending two weeks at the Leisure Time Park at Seaside, Oregon. When we arrived on the 15th of September the park was full in contrast to nearly everywhere else we have been this summer. This is a nice park for RVers. All of the sites are full service, flat and easy to get into. There are enough trees to give it a pleasant atmosphere without endangering RV's or getting in the way of setting up satellite systems.

The town of Seaside is charming little town that is as its name implies right along the beautiful Oregon coast. There are a lot of interesting shops and restaurants.

Our friends Bob and Julie are here and we have been able to spend a lot of time with them. They were at La Conner but had to leave a week before we did. There have also been a few other pickelball players here and we have been able to play every day except one when it rained. The weather has mostly been quite nice, sunny and mild.


Bob and Julie returned to Sea Side to travel with us for a bit. Barb and Julie got right into some projects, beading of course, but since there are a lot of fruits around this time of year they decided to can peaches, and they did a great job of it.


Can't wait to eat these, think we will get some ice cream. yum.

Chehalis, Washington

We are on our way to Seaside, Or. and could have made it in one day but decided to take it easy and make an overnight stop at Chehalis, Washington. It was an easy drive of about 170 miles. We anticipated congestion through Seattle but it was not bad at all. The express lanes on I-5 are nice for avoiding avoiding on and off traffic and make driving an RV through easier. We stopped for fuel at the Flying J in Tacoma and made it here early in the afternoon.

We are at the Chehalis Thousand Trails Park. We have now been at most of the Thousand Trails Parks and wanted to see this one which the distinction of being the oldest. It is another very wooded park. The sites are large and the woods make them seem more private . It is a bit easier than La Conner to drive around in a big RV. It has a fair number of amenities including hot tub, 2 pools, 2 tennis/pickelball courts, a large dog run area and a limited exercise room.

Both Mount Ranier and Mount St. Helen's are visible in parts of the park.

Mount Ranier going down the road to the park.




Mount St Helen from the campground.

La Conner, Washington

We are staying at the La Conner Washington Thousand Trails park for 15 days. We came here to see some of our friends who are also traveling in the west. It was a shock when we came to find that our friend Merralee had had a nasty fall that morning while walking her dog and broke her left foot in two places. So Merralee has been housebound(trailerbound?) and Barb has been visiting daily trying to cheer her up a bit.

It is still blackberry season here. Barb has picked some most days and made several pies with blackberries often mixed with another fruit. And Dennis has had plenty of blackberries to put on his cereal or ice cream.

We got here as the annual pickelball tournament was taking place. We got to take part in most events. But we didn't impress anyone with our showing. (Alibi: not playing for 4 months seems to take the edge off of one's game). But the quality of play was great and we met some nice people. There have been enough players to keep playing after the tournament but Dennis has been frustrated that his back problems have flared up again preventing him from playing.

It is a pretty park with scenic towns of La Conner and Anacortes within easy driving distance.

view of the dock area of Anacortes. While taking these photos, a lot of antique cars came to the overlook. Later found out that these were the cars that Oland and Tom went to LaConner to see, oh well at least I got to see them












At the end we had a cookout of our own and had a great time with friends.

The cookout was the first time Merralee got out of the 5th wheel.

Blackberries

We said goodbye and left Dennis' parent's house this morning and drove across the Cascade mountains on highway 2 through Stevens Pass. It was a pleasant trip with great weather. We looked forward to getting west of the mountains as we had had several very hot days and expected cooler temperatures. It could not be much nicer than today. We stopped in Monroe at the Thunderbird Leasure Time Resort which we can stay at with our thousand trails membership. We were a bit concerned as we had some mixed information on how the sites would be for a larger RV but it turned out to be fine. We found a long back in site. There were a number of others available. We took it easy the rest of the day. Barbara noticed some blackberries growing in the campground and went out and picked a couple of quarts.






what a great pie these will make, cant wait

Electric City, Washington

We are parked now for a week at Dennis' parent's house in Electric City, Washington. Until we went to Alaska, we had always thought of Electric City as being a very small and somewhat remote town. But our perspective is a bit different now. It is hard to see it as remote when within a couple of miles there is a large supermarket and other amenities of civilization like a hardware store, several restaurants, barber shops, dentists, etc. Still, Electric City is the kind of place where if you ask someone for a phone number, they respond with a four digit number. If you look puzzled or ask for the 3 digit prefix, they know you are a stranger. If you don't know the area code, they immediately understand that you are from another planet.

Electric City is best known and named for being a couple of miles above Grand Coulee Dam. It is secondarily known for being on Banks Lake which is the man made lake made from water pumped out of the Columbia River at Grand Coulee Dam for ultimate use in irrigation in Eastern and Central Washington. Banks Lake has increasingly become a recreation area for boating, camping, and bass fishing. People from western Washington often come here in the summer for its warm, sunny, dry weather.
banks lake near Electric city

In addition to visiting, we are helping Dennis' parents with a few things around the house and yard, and some housekeeping issues of our own. Dennis replaced a hose on our generator that had a small leak and got a ladder and climbed up on our roof to repair our roof vent fan. We are also washing the bus and car, and repacking items that we left here while we traveled to Alaska, and Dennis will change the oil in the generator.

Here are some pictures of the dam and the area.

there is great fishing and boating of all kinds here,

view of coulee dam

Time to get things fixed

Yesterday we left the Little Diamond NACO park at Newport and drove to the Detroit Diesel shop in the Spokane Valley. We were a bit worried as our discussion with the mechanic in Whitehorse as well as phone conversation with the manager of the Spokane shop indicated that oil leaking from the top back of the engine is usually a labor intensive fix. When we got there Dennis showed them the leak and said that he had thought that it was diesel fuel but the mechanic in the Yukon check and was sure it was an oil leak. They did a preliminary check and agreed with Dennis that it was in fact diesel fuel. That was good news as the leak if hard to get at was likely at least to be external to the engine itself. So we left the bus with them optimistic that it could be repaired in a couple of hours rather than a couple of days.

While we were waiting we decided to drive over to Lake Couer d'Alene. We spent some time walking along a path along the lake shore and just enjoying the setting on a perfect morning. When we returned the bus was done as it had simply been a bad fuel line. So it was an easy fix. And after discussion with the mechanic we decided that this was the likely culprit in our loss of engine prime in Seward, Alaska several weeks ago.this city has a beautiful lake and bike and running path.

We proceeded to the Ponderosa Falls RV Park. We are scheduled to stay in here for 4 days. This park is a contrast to the last one in that it is nearly full and quite busy. We got a full hookup 50 amp site through ROD. They have more than the usual activities and recreation facilities. We are at the edge of the Spokane area and close to amenities of a larger city but still in an ancrowded area. The park itself is has many tall pine trees that provide some pleasant shade as today is one of the hottest days of the summer here. Among the facilites this park has 2 pickleball courts, although only one currently has a net. We haven't been on a pickleball court in months so we went out and hit some balls today.


Wow it was great to get out onto a pickleball court even thou Barb has a bad ankle, we were able to get some practice in. The exercise felt good



We wanted to stay here in part to be able to get some things taken care of that would be probably be easier in a larger town. We had been having some intermittent problems with starting our car and had put off getting it taken care of. Dennis took it in today and had a new starter and battery installed. We also contacted our insurance about our windshield and they scheduled someone to come out tomorrow and replace it. So these items along with the bus fuel leak are the major things we needed to get done.



This is a nice waterfall here at the campground, you can see where the place got its name.