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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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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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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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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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.
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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!
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From Sturgis it was two and a half days of solid driving, stopping overnight
at truck stops in Sioux Falls and just past Chicago.
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On the trip home we passed through:
Got to start thinking about the winter trip to Texas and Arizona now !!!!