Back in the USA

June 14--Grand Forks, BC

Woke up early this morning, but managed to get back to sleep and slept until 7 (probably because I fed the cats snacks at 3am). Puttered around a bit until 8am, where I went back for one last dip in the hot pool. Then I checked the tires (all well!) and we headed out.

The drive down to Nakusp was pretty well deserted; it's an advantage of being on a road that you have to take a ferry to enter: by the time I was on the road, the batch getting off the ferry at 9am had passed, and the 9:30am batch wouldn't catch up with me, so I rather took my time. Most of the roads today followed the same pattern: narrow valley (often filled with lake or stream), with the road partway up one side. Very pretty views of snow-capped mountains adorned with clearcuts, as well as lake views. With the occasional deer to increase adrenaline.

At Nakusp I stopped at a Kal-Tire place to have the lug nuts on the one tire checked; all was well, and we went on. I stopped at New Denver, and rather wish I had spent more time. It's a cute little town on a hill, with some artisan shops, a nice grocery (where I bought a chicken wrap and a tea for breakfast), and several war memorials. I also found my favorite motel: Dome Quixote, made up of little canvas huts. And then we went straight up a mountain.

I thought the roads before were deserted. Nope. Road 31A between New Denver and Kaslo was as deserted a road as I've ever driven on. No houses, once past the outskirts of town. No traffic passing me (and I did not drive fast). Damn little traffic in the opposite direction. All hill, mountain, stream (very fast-flowing), and sky. Absolutely gorgeous, and I was very glad that I could go as slow as I needed to. I didn't drive very far today, but it took a long time because I had to keep slowing down for turns and hills and such. But even the weather cooperated: no wind, high clouds to keep it cool.

I stopped at Ainsworth Hot springs for my finale. I mostly wanted to go here because they have a "cave" in their hot hot spring that you can go into. So I pulled in and parked next to an RV with a big dog in it. I let the cats loose in the rig, so they could pee or drink or whatever, and Nell immediately spotted that dog and began glaring at it. I don't think she likes dogs. Puck could have cared less, of course. He was more worried that I was leaving.

The hot spring was fairly reasonably priced, and I even got a nice big biodegradable plastic bag for my clothes. Their warm pool (96 degrees) was not huge, but had lots of nice nooks for people to relax in. There was also a spring-fed cold plunge (40 degrees) that I did go into--up to the ankles, and I also rinsed my hair in it before I left. The outside part of the hot hot pool (105 degrees) was small, but there was a lot more room inside, which was well worth the price of admission.

If you've been in a cave, you know they tell you not to touch the stalactites and stalagmites. Well, the inside of this cave (which had been at least roughed out by people, since the floor was smooth and it was about 5 feet wide throughout) was covered in most places by stalactites. The calcium carbonate and suchlike in the water (which was streaming down from the ceiling in drops--probably this was excavated in the actual spring--there was a stream leading in from a dark corner, which I didn't explore because it was dark) had caused huge calcium formations to grow, with ripples and tiny straws and all sorts of colors. It was well worth the steaming heat to touch and see all those things.

Even with the cave, I only spent an hour or so in the springs--I'm kind of hot-springed-out. So I went back to the RV and ate a tomato sandwich (as I'm headed back to the states tomorrow, I'm trying to eat all of my Canada vegetables/fruits) while pondering where to stop for the night. I decided on Grand Forks, and began driving south.

Nelson is a nice big town, right on Kootenay lake, complete with little college. Castlegar is much the same, although we didn't drive through the center of it the way you had to drive through Nelson. And then we drove up to a 5000-foot pass, which took a while (yay for passing lanes!), and then back down (which in a way is even more disconcerting). Another "No services for too damn long" road.

I'm in a little RV park, between the Kettle River and the road (which is rather loud). The lady in the office was nice and let me move from the rather unlevel spot I was in before, so now not only am I level, but I have a little gazebo to sit in (right next to the swimming ladder--don't go in now, though, unless you like drowning, as the river is deep and fast and cold with runoff). There's also a library, so I can exchange some of the books I've read for new ones, and nice washrooms (showers only a dollar). I was going to go take a shower, but we just had a thunderstorm pop up just east of here. I don't know if it will retrograde back to get us, but it's rumbling something fierce at the moment. I don't think we've gone through a thunderstorm in the rig--tropical storm yes, thunderstorm no. Puck isn't nervous at the moment, but I think I'll wait until it stops rumbling before I shower.


June 15--Vantage, WA

The little rumbly thunderstorm didn't come near us, thankfully.

Puck woke me up early (5:15), and attempting to get back to sleep didn't work. So I listened to the CBC and read a bit and ate some cheese, fed the cats at 6:30, and discovered something unprecedented. There's a cat food that Nell won't eat! I had given her one of the varieties of Friskies I'd bought (Turkey and cheese in gravy), and she had vomited it two mornings ago. I figured she just ate too fast or it was just a hairball or something equally temporary, but when I fed her the same type this morning, she didn't touch it. She sniffed it, ran up to me and meowed, then ran back and sniffed it again, and meowed again. After I recovered from the shock of Nell not eating food ravenously, I fed her a bunch of Greenies, to see if it was the food or her. It was the food; she scarfed those treats up with a frenzy I recognized. So, anybody want a can of Friskies? Luckily I only have one left, and that variety isn't usually included in packs in the US.

We were out by 8:00 or so. I drove slowly through Grand Forks, looking for a Tim Hortons, but didn't see one. So I got a Subway egg/ham/cheese sandwich and headed for the border.

Where I promptly pissed off the guy by not stopping at the stop sign. Sorry, dude, I wasn't sure if that was for the people not being helped or what. So I answered a few questions, he took my passport in to (probably) record my passage, came in the side door for a minute to make sure that I was indeed alone, and then I was allowed to go. I had to drive through two large columns, set about 10 feet apart, after going through customs; I thought about taking a picture of them, but I'd probably get arrested. I wonder if they were radiation detectors? I've never seen them before.

The drive to Republic was lovely and so full of deer I nearly lost my mind. The first part in particular was bad; the road went between the hills/woods and the river, and apparently the deer were headed to drink. I saw several and once had to do a panic stop (not fun in an RV--EVERYTHING slid forward, including some things that haven't moved all trip) to avoid the damn dumb thing. But it was damn pretty, at least what I could see of it when not looking frantically for deer.

I filled up in Republic and bought some Doritos and a soda, then headed south. More hills, more deer (I passed a mom and very young baby as I turned down the road), and more slow driving. Between the hills (where I have to go both up and down slowly) and the twisty road, I'm glad there was almost no traffic, so I could drive at my leisure. I wanted to go to Nespelem, where Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce is buried, which required turning off on a road that made the prior road look like the Seeney Strip (for those not familiar with the UP of Michigan, the Seeney Strip is a road that is not only flat but has no curves whatsoever for over 20 miles). Twisty up very slowly, even more twisty down (I had the RV in 2nd gear for a while, and still needed to use my brakes). The climate got dryer and dryer; it had been dry last night (I woke up at 2am with total cotton mouth) but this was REALLY dry. No wonder the Nez Perce were so unhappy here! I sure would be; I don't like deserts.

I found the Chief Joseph Memorial, which happens to be at a rest stop. Somehow, memorializing a great Native leader with toilets just strikes me as wrong. I wanted to find his grave, and did find the graveyard, but after driving up to the tiny parking lot (which had some potholes that when combined with the steep slope made me fear I was going to roll the RV), I found the fences were locked. Oh well, I tried.

So I turned south towards Grand Coulee. When I got there, the deserted road immediately turned into a suburban street, with trees and neat little houses; it was a bit disconcerting. As was the dam itself. I crossed a little bridge toward the visitor's center, with this big dam looming some distance away. I pulled into the parking lot; the people who designed this were thinking, because the parking spots were long enough to easily park my RV.

The dam is huge. It's about 200 feet shorter than Hoover dam, but Hoover dam is a triangle; this is a rectangle about five times as wide. Most of the middle of the dam was spillway, so there was a huge waterfall crashing down over the lip of the dam, making a loud roar. I went inside and watched a couple of videos (one was basically an ad for building dams; the other was geology about Glacial Lake Missoula, which was a lot more interesting).

During the Ice Age, an ice dam would form in Idaho, blocking the Clark Fork of the Columbia, and creating a huge lake (more water than Lake Erie). You can still see where the shoreline was on the mountains surrounding Missoula. When there was too much water, the dam would break, and all of the water would drain out, possibly in about 48 hours. Whereupon it scoured much of central Washington clean down to the bedrock. It cut valleys and coulees and left the remnants of waterfalls and just wrecked the place. And it did this dozens of times over a bit more than 2000 years. And yes, people were living here when that happened; that would be a hell of a thing to see.

After leaving the dam, I drove by Dry Falls, which is one of these waterfall remnants. It's not like a glacial hanging valley; it's more dramatic. When the Dry Falls weren't Dry they were about 3.5 miles long and over 400 feet high, and now there's a half-oval cliff with sheer walls and lakes in the bottom. It's the bizarrest thing.

I drove along the coulees (relatively flat, at least once we got to the bottom of the coulee), letting people pass me whenever possible. I decided I could make it to either Vantage or Ellensburg, and decided on Vantage. It's basically a campground by itself, with a small motel and a restaurant and some houses, right off the Interstate on the west bank of the Columbia. The campground is nearly deserted, except for some long-term people. I'm a bit leery, since there isn't anyone near me, but I'm close enough to someone tenting and to the motel that if I blow the air horn I happen to have by my bed, I should be heard.

I did laundry ($2.25 total to wash and dry one load--I can't do it that cheap at home!) and ate a burger at the restaurant (OK, but the mystery burger sauce was a bit too mysterious for me) with a salad (which was tiny, but any vegetable counts!). I walked to the one bathhouse I had seen, only to find it closed. Grumpy, I walked back and then realized that the laundry building has bathrooms, and took a nice hot shower.

The cats are fine; I played with Puck for a while. Nell is now sleeping on the driver's seat, which has Puck's carrier half over it; maybe she feels better that way. It's partly cloudy, with a bit of rain here and there, and the clouds are dramatic. I can see some of the river, with the bluffs on either side. It's also damn windy, and the rig is rocking a bit back and forth. Ought to be fun sleeping tonight!


June 16--Castle Rock, WA

Actually, sleeping was uneventful, even with the wind rocking the RV a bit, until Puck woke me up at 4:10. His excuse, I suspect, was that the sky in the east was getting light, and we were facing east so he could see it, thus time to feed cats! I finally put him in the kennel and slept until 7am--such decadence! I fed them a bit later and discovered that the restaurant I ate at last night wasn't open, so I had a cheese sandwich. We were on the road by 8:30, and spent the first 10 miles on the interstate going up a long, long hill. And then we went down a hill into Ellensburg. And then up and down a couple more hills to Yakima, where I stopped at WalMart for supplies (some food, plus a thermometer so I know just how damn cold it is outside--right now it's 57 out, and 72 in). Then I got lost in a rabbit warren of a parking lot trying to get diesel, of course only to find out later that I could have gotten it cheaper and easier a bit down the road. Oh well. We were back on the road, headed west on 12, by 11am.

Another loooong hill, this time up the Cascades toward Mt. Rainier (which I caught a glimpse of coming into Yakima, before the clouds set in), in the clouds and rain. The rain wasn't bad, never too hard, but the clouds pretty much killed any chance of a view. We chugged up to White Pass (it was 35 degrees at 4500 feet, but no snow falling), and then down. At least half of the traffic was RVs, so I felt right at home.

After we went through the pass, I looked for some place for lunch (I wanted a sandwich). And looked and looked and looked; some sit-down restaurants, but no sandwich place. I finally stopped in Toledo, at the IGA, and bought some jerky and a bagel with cream cheese (no sandwiches there either). By then it was close to 2pm, and there was little/no chance of seeing Mt. St. Helens through the murk. I listened to the weather radio and found there was a better chance of a view tomorrow (not much of a chance, just better). So we stopped at this RV park, at the foot of the road to the mountain, to wait until tomorrow. We have Internet, cable TV, heat if necessary, and lots of new food--we'll be fine.

I forgot to mention, on the way to Toledo we went through a little patch of old-growth forest. Lots of tall trees, and it was DARK. I hope to see more in the Olympics!

Someone is trying to back a trailer into the narrow spot next to me. I'm very glad I have a motorhome! And Puck was so fascinated he tried to stand up and forgot he was on the edge of the table, and fell off it! Ah, my cat.