We took some rather nice scenic roads south from Bellingham to Seattle and arrived at nephew Andy and Estelle’s house for the weekend. I haven’t seen either since we think 2013 – just after they were married – and now they have two delightful kids Lou and Marcel – twins!
The weekend weather was lovely and we got to take the dogs for walks with the kids – quite a hit, we built a solar powered fan, messed around with gyroscopes, enjoyed Estelle’s books and took in a concert downtown with the Luminaires. It was a busy, fun-filled weekend – thanks guys!
I don’t think we’ve mentioned on this blog that one of the target visits of this whole trip is to get to the Burning Man festival. I’d never even heard of Burning Man before I met Mindi – she’s been there 4 times already. She was somewhat coy about the whole event – so I didn’t really know what I was in for – but game to give it a go…
Burning Man is in Black Rock City, Nevada in less than 10 days time – we’re in Seattle, Washington nearly 800 miles north (if we were to take the quick way…) – We didn’t!
We had hoped to visit the Olympic Peninsular and to stop in and say hello to Paul and Chris Lever – old sailing friends, but that would mean we’d have to rush through that 800 miles… so instead we headed towards the Southern Cascades and Mt Rainier, stopping at a campsite at the Dalles River.
The following day we found a spectacular campsite high up a winding gravel/pothole road overlooking Mt. Rainier and had a great campfire.
We found some crazy ‘roads’ between Mt. Rainer and Mt. Hood – steep sided, narrow and bumpy! Found ourselves a nice boondocking spot in full view of Mt Hood – but unfortunately the site was posted ‘No Campfires’ ☹
Crazy roads continued the next couple of days – with an interesting meeting with a dump truck on a blind bend! Missed! Washington sure does have a load of crazy roads – great fun!
We met with Ellen – Mindi’s cousin who works at a government trade school type of a place out in the boonies. Underprivileged kids (sort of 17 – 24) come and stay for a couple of years learning several trades and getting a jump start. It’s a great opportunity – but I wonder how long before it suffers cuts. Ellen was able to arrange for us to camp beside an unused ranger station.
Our continuing route south took us through some amazing lava fields and on one high pass they had erected a really neat monument – inside of which there were holes through the walls pointing towards various different landmarks, so you really knew for sure what you were looking at! We then went into the Lassen Volcanic National Park – one massive lava field, before making our way up to Crater Lake – apparently one of the cleanest bodies of water in the US – it’s a lake formed within the caldera of an extinct volcano. Unfortunately Crater Lake was inundated with tourists, all the campsites were full so we drove through the park and found a boondocking spot right behind a forestry fire marshalling center – no campfire tonight! It’s been fantastic being able to enter all the national parks at no cost – having purchased a lifetime senior pass for $80. We estimate we’ve saved well over $1,000 this trip – hell, saved $70 at these two parks alone!
Unfortunately, Moonpie has been struggling a bit recently – off his food, struggling to poop, etc. – so we decided we’d better head to a vet to get him checked out before we took them both to a Dog sitter that would keep them entertained while we attended Burning Man. Moonpie got a clean bill of health – and some super expensive dogfood just in case!
We camped south of Lake Tahoe in a nice free camping area with several other RVs, but the dogs were able to roam pretty freely – a good thing before their week long stay with the sitter.
Next up: Burning Man!