February 16, 2020. We thought we’d planned our arrival at Bayview State Park very cleverly, on Sunday afternoon when the weekenders were packing up. We arrived to find only one space with electricity available. Looked at the calendar and crap, a three day weekend (President’s Day). We’re gonna get the hang of this by next year for sure. We have been without electricity for over a week (a luxury) and without Roger since Belfair over on the peninsula.

We’re heading back to Larrabee tomorrow where we will stay until we get Calliope back in the water. We’ll post again when we start back up the Inside Passage again! Love and Light, Alan and Nancy

February 13, 2020. We stopped here at this DNR Horse Camp to wait out the weekend. The state parks are getting pretty full on weekends now. We’ve found that the places without electricity and water are not nearly as popular. We thought we’d found the perfect place until about 9 AM on Valentine’s Day when the air was split with gunfire that didn’t stop. Turns out that a gravel pit just down the road is a popular local target practice area.

So, we packed up the truck with our skis and set off up Hwy 20 in search of snow. We didn’t find much, nothing we wanted to ski on, but we saw some lovely waterfalls, lakes and dams.

February 11, 2020. On our way to Kanasket-Palmer, we stopped at Snoqualmie Falls. These are natural falls (no dam) with a 270 ft. drop into the gorge. Beautiful.

Kanasket-Palmer Campground is inside of a loop in the Green River. This river is a popular white-water rafting area with class III and IV rapids. We had fun hiking the trail along the river and discussing how we would approach the various rapids in our raft. If we still had a raft. Which we don’t. Good thing, huh?

On our way back from skiing, we stopped at this awesome sculpture garden. Everything is made from bits of scrap metal. Reminds me of a Van Gogh painting where he just threw blobs of paint on a canvas and a face appears. This guy throws together nuts, bolts, car parts, horseshoes etc. et voila!

February 9, 2020. We came up to Alder Lake to cross-country ski on Mt. Rainier. This campground is near the dam and is owned by the power company. We thought it a nice little campground off the beaten path. Until dark. When all the streetlights came on!!! I guess they have to use all that power for something!

It turned out that the road up to Mt. Rainier was closed from landslides so we couldn’t get up there. We did find a place to ski, though it was a bit steeper than we like. Got to keep all our parts and pieces together.

February 4, 2020. We stayed 5 days at Belfair. We had full hookups, so did some laundry. I bought a tiny washing machine and a spinner (doesn’t dry but spins really fast so clothes are “mostly” dry). Then we string a clothesline from cupboard to cupboard and turn up the heat. It takes all day to wash what would normally be just a few loads because the washer is so small, then another day to dry. Sometimes it seems easier to just go to the laundromat…until I walk into a laundromat.

February 3, 2020. We’ve been here at Flagler for over a week. It’s just across the bay from Port Townsend; very quiet and peaceful. There are about a dozen old gun batteries, barracks, parade grounds and such. The guns have mostly been removed and the barracks and officer’s quarters are now vacation rentals. Gun batteries can be found at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island at Keystone, Fort Worden at Port Townsend and Fort Flagler, forming a triangle through which no undesirable ship could have passed into Puget Sound. Whose undesirable ships they were concerned about is unclear. Spanish galleons?

On Saturday we drove down to Kingston and walked on the ferry to Edmonds where we met Alan’s daughter, Jacquie, and her family. We had lunch and then toured the Ballard Locks, watching boats going from the Puget Sound to Lake Washington and back. We forgot the cell phone, so no pics of the locks.

Friday, January 24. We arrived yesterday at Sequim Bay State Park and spent the day re-provisioning. We have a beautiful spot overlooking the bay and dock, causing us to miss Calliope a little.

We haven’t had a good signal from Roger since we last posted from Pacific Beach State Park. We stayed there for two days but never got out of Harvey because the wind blew the rain sideways for both days with no sign of quitting. It was too bad because we would’ve liked to walk the beautiful beach but we could barely see the ocean for the rain, fog and salt spray. A big storm was heading toward the peninsula so we backtracked south to Ocean City State Park where we stayed for a week, waiting out the weather. It rained, then snowed, then hailed and rained some more. This was another place where we could hear the surf but couldn’t see the ocean and we could not get across the marshes without some serious wading. We finally made it by bicycling a couple miles to a casino where we could ford a creek to get to the beach.

After waiting out the storm, we headed north. The further north we went, the more snow. It barely snowed where we were but we found out that it really dumped on the Port Angeles area, closing roads and campgrounds. We stayed one night at Kalaloch campground in the Olympic National Park. This was a nice spot next to the ocean but there was a strong wind and rain that night. Next we headed to the Hoh campground but the road was closed so we ended up at the Mora campground in La Push. We still wanted to go to the Hoh rain forest so we threw our cross-country skis in the back of Leroy and headed back up there. We went past the road closed sign (what we were afraid to do while towing Harvey—-gotta be able to turn around!) until we came to a locked, road closed gate. Dang! There wasn’t enough snow on the road to ski (so, why was it closed?), so we walked a few miles up the road along the Hoh river and back. Well, it was a nice walk with some beautiful old trees.

We contented ourselves with walking around Mora campground and riding our bikes the few miles to Rialto Beach in La Push. It rained pretty much nonstop and we were sick of it so decided we needed to get the hell out of the rain forest! We headed north to Salt Creek Recreation Area, just west of Port Angeles, where we had a beautiful view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and one intermittent bar from the real Roger! On our way, we stopped to look at Beaver Falls on Beaver Creek, next to Hwy 113. We need a bumper sticker that says, “We brake for waterfalls.”

Sunday, January 5. We left California before Christmas and made it to Cape Disappointment in two days, stopping at Humbug State Park (which was as bad as it sounds, but hey, it was Christmas!) and again at Tillicum Beach. We were in a hurry to get back to Washington because we have a great senior deal in the state parks. Free for non-hookups, $10 for hookups! Thank you, Washington! The boondocking isn’t working out too well here on the northwest coast. The days are short and it rains alla time and the solar panels can’t keep up. Our batteries wear down after about three days. We either need to spend the winters in Arizona (not) or buy a small generator as a backup. The other issue with boondocking is finding a place that we can safely get into and turn back around to get out of. We also like to get way off the main road (noise). It’s harder than you’d think. Walmart and casino parking lots are not in our plan. Our rig is small, compared to many, but still big. And finally, when we’re boondocking, we usually lose Roger, so can’t find the next place to go. I’m gonna buy a book (remember those?) with maps and recommendations. Ah well, our first summer in the boat was a learning experience too.

Speaking of learning, did you know that everybody and their uncle go camping at Christmas? Same with thanksgiving. The campgrounds are packed full on the holidays. Who’da thunk it? I would never in my entire life have said, “gee, I think we should go camping in the cold and rain for Christmas!” Hell no. We’d be sitting by the fire in a warm and cozy HOUSE with brandy and egg nog. What’s wrong with these people? We have to remember to take evasive action at holidays. Which is another reason we need the generator. Don’t wanna get stuck in campgrounds at Christmas. Phew.

Now that I got all that off my chest, I’ll tell you about Cape Disappointment. We stayed at the cape through Christmas until the 29th, but poor ol’ Roger didn’t make it. Cape Disappointment is on the Washington side of the mouth of the Columbia River. The Columbia River Bar is a ship-eater. Mariners call it ‘the graveyard of the Pacific’. There is Dead Man’s Cove and Dead Man’s Hollow where the bodies wash up. They’ve built three long jetties to try to tame it a little and keep the channel in one place. There are two lighthouses. The first was built at the tip of the Cape but sea captains coming from the north couldn’t see it in time so they built a second lighthouse up the coast a way and called it, North Head Lighthouse. While we were at the state park campground we rode our bikes around, hiked up to both lighthouses, walked the beach and the north jetty. It was all very beautiful, with waves crashing into the rocks.

We met a couple on the beach who were panning for gold. The black sand is full of minerals and gold too, apparently. They had a multi-level contraption with a washboard bottom (a Christmas present) and a big tub. They fill the tub with water, turn on a pump to get flow through the contraption, then put scoops of sand in at the top. Guy said that after a day of this he could get 1/2 oz of gold dust. Not too bad wages and the view is great.