Travel News
W. Canada 2000


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This page last updated on September 24, 2000

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A stroke of good luck occurred on Sunday (Sept 3) - I tried to empty the sewer holding tank and the valve failed and jammed shut. Spent most of the day getting dripped on (and worse!) by sewage as I tried to remove the broken valve and instal a new one, which luckily was available at the campstore for $17.  You might wonder why this was lucky?  Well, it could easily have been on the Monday morning when we were leaving for Seattle at 8 am.

The drive to Seattle was uneventful - arrived there before noon, left the trailer at a campsite in Issaquah, and spent the rest of the day in Seattle. It's a pretty city, surrounded by water - the ocean (Puget Sound) to the west and Lake Washington to the east.  Downtown near the Space Needle was really jammed as a Music & Arts Festival was on for the long weekend.  We took a drive along Magnolia Blvd, where the expensive-looking houses overlook Puget Sound, to Discovery Park.  Our sight-seeing here was cut short by some great blackberry bushes that were covered in huge juicy berries!  Headed back downtown for a look around the harbourfront and Pioneer Square, which seemed to be the most touristy. The parts with the spectacular high-rises seemed to be business areas.  Lots of piers on the waterfront, mostly with oyster bars and restaurants with outdoor dining.  There are lots of islands just off the coast, quite similar to Vancouver, so we took a ferry ride to Bemerton to get a nice view of the city.  The boat tours were $15 - $30 but the ferry ride was only $3.70 return and was really exciting.  It was a twin-hull high-speed ferry that travelled at 40 knots but seemed MUCH faster, more like a really fast ski boat!  We took the last trip before sunset and returned after dark to see the city lights.  Really nice trip for $7 for both of us !!
 

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Magnolia Blvd, Seattle
Downtown Seattle
The Olde Curiosity Shop, Seattle waterfront, including a 400 year old mummy! They claim these are all real.
The Pier at Seattle
Downtown from the Ferry

Tuesday was a drive-till-you-drop day.  We left Seattle at 8:50 am, to head east on I 90 for the next 2000 miles or so. Drove over the Snoqualmie Pass, across Washington State (it's flat and into prairie-type farming) to Spokane where we had to make a stop for a hot dog in Costco!  On across Idaho through Coeur D'Alene, where we saw the famous golf course that has the floating green. It's a par 3 hole and the green is a floating island that is winched in or out to change the hole length. Players have to take a boat to the green!  Next came Montana, and a change to Mountain Time, and eventually pulled into a Flying J Truck Stop at 10:30 pm in Butte, Montana for the night (free overnight RV parking).  960 Kms today !!

Arrived at Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, noon Wednesday in the rain and made reservations for the Fishing Bridge RV Park, on Yellowstone Lake. This Lake is at 8000' and is in the caldera of an extinct volcano, which probably explains the prominent features of Yellowstone - hot springs, mud volcanoes, and geysers, the most famous being Old Faithful.  Our campsite was about 50 miles away so we visited some of the attractions on the way.  Stopped off at Mammoth Hot Springs, Tower Falls, and the Mud Volcano - this last one has a geyser that belches!  It's the Dragon's Mouth Cavern and the 'belching' is caused by the erupting steam causing waves inside the cavern which echo. Weather improved through the day and watched sunset over the Lake, which is claimed to be the worlds' largest alpine lake.
 
 

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Historic West Entrance
Mammoth Hot Springs
Didn't see many bears but there were buffalo everywhere.
Mud Volcano and Dragon's Mouth

Thursday was a full day of sight-seeing.  Started off at Yellowstone Canyon, with the Upper (150') and Lower Falls (350').  This was probably the most spectacular part of the whole park, the range of colours in the canyon rivalled those at the Grand Canyon.  We spent about three hours at the various view points on both sides of the canyon and finished it with a picnic lunch by the Lower Falls, at Red Rock viewpoint.  The rest of the day was taken up with a variety of mud holes, steaming springs, multi-coloured ponds, and finally Old Faithful Geyser.  It gets it's name because it is quite regular in it's eruptions and averages one per 83 minutes.  The next was was predicted for 4:48pm, plus or minus 10 minutes and started right at 4:39 !!  We weren't sure what to expect at Yellowstone as we hadn't planned to go there before our journey started, so we hadn't read up on it.  Really glad we went -   definitely worth the visit.
 

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Just the facts...
The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

 
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Norris Geyser Basin
The Old Faithful Geyser(s)

Decided to head for Mt Rushmore on the way back as it was only 25 miles off the Interstate.  The route there took us along the Buffalo Bill Scenic Drive, past endless ranches and horse riding resorts and then to Cody, Wyoming, where we noticed the Buffalo Bill Historical Center so stopped off for a visit.  It is a huge building housing four separate museums and only opened in June, 2000.  Lots of old cowboy and indian stuff as well as many of Cody's possessions, plus a huge firearms museum that went on forever, with enough guns to arm a third world country.  The Americans are definitely obsessed with guns.
 

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The Buffalo Bill Historical Centre
Buffalo Bill's famous coat
Sitting Bull's tomahawk
Firearms Museum
Indian Museum

Mt. Rushmore, near Rapid City, South Dakota, was very impressive - what a feat, carving the four presidential heads into the granite mountain!  The heads were about 60 ft. high, equivalent to a person being 425 ft. tall.  There was a presentation in the visitor centre describing how the heads were created - 90% of the "carving" was done with dynamite. He had a couple of interesting problems - he started carving a head to the left of Washington, got the brow wrong and blasted the entire face off the rock and re-did it to the right! While doing the 'recessed' head he encountered faulty rock and kept re-doing it deeper and finished it with only 10' of mountain left behind the head.  During our visit, we saw two little Shih Tzu dogs that looked very much like Buffy and Brandy.
 

Visitor Centre
Under the Presidents
Buff and Brandy look-alikes
Lincoln
Mt Rushmore

Before heading back home we stopped at nearby Sturgis, SD.  This is home to the famous motorcycle rallies which attract huge gatherings from around the world.  In 1990 there were 300,000 motorcycles there - mainly Harleys. It's a tiny town with only a couple of streets and they totally took over the place (and all the surrounding towns) this year with over 1,000,000 people attending!
 

Cyclone
Triumph Bonneville
Peter Fonda's Easy Rider chopper
Custom Harley
Sturgis during the Rally
A Sturgis Wedding

From Sturgis it was two and a half days of solid driving, stopping overnight at truck stops in Sioux Falls and just past Chicago.
 

Tried to trade trucks after an overnight stay, but no deal !!

On the trip home we passed through:

Wow, in total we drove across 5 Provinces and 9 States from June 17 to September 11 and put another 19,000 Kms on the clock!  The highlights were seeing the moose, bears and deer in N. Ontario;   Banff National Park and its incredible turquoise lakes;   the mountains, lakes and hot sunny weather of the Okanagan Valley;   the beautiful surroundings of Vancouver;  Yellowstone Park;   and Mount Rushmore.

Got to start thinking about the winter trip to Texas and Arizona now !!!!


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