Travel

Happy Canada Day

-Sunday July 1st Morning-
Sunday dawned overcast and misty. While we waited on the house full of people (4 Canadian adult cousins, 2 Canadian kid cousins, 4 American adults and 2.5 American kids) to all get up, get some breakfast and chill until we could head down to the local park for the Canada Day festivities, Donna and I decided to go for a walk and get our first international cache. As soon as we mentioned the word walk, there came a series of small voices, “Me too”, “Me too”, “Me too” & “Me too.” James and Mady and their 2 cousins, Laura and Anna, were coming with us.

We headed uphill first, so that the way back would be all downhill. There were about 5 caches within a mile of the house, but mostly the kids were more interested in being kids, so we headed for a park where they could blow off steam. Donna and I pushed swings, spun merry-go-rounds, teetered totters and made sure no one wondered off. Finally the rain and wet pants convinced the kids to head back home, but we walked right past it. There was another small park in sight just down and across the street from the house. More playing and whatnot ensued.

We didn’t mind this detour at all because this park also held a geocache. I headed off, GPSr in hand to look for it with James and Laura. Laura spotted the camoed lock-n-lock first behind a fence post. Laura grabbed a hockey trading card and James took nothing. We had accidentally left behind at home all the SC State Park schwag we had collected to drop in the caches out west, so I dropped in a couple of American quarters for trade. And as I was explaining the whole trading thing, take something, leave something, she put the card back and picked up the 2 quarters. Oh, well, they’ll catch on later.

In the photo above, from left to right: James, Laura, Morris the Moose (the RCMP mascot), Anna, Morris’ handler(who makes sure he just eats bear kibble, not little kids), Maddy and lastly, some random passerby.

He Who Hesitates Is Searched

-Saturday June 30th Afternoon-
After we picked up our rental car we drove over to Mukilteo to watch the Yellow Belted nephew James take his weekly Taekwondo lesson. We of course reacquaint ourselves with his little sister Maddy and acquaint ourselves with his newest and littlest sister Susan*.

*I looked through all my photos and I don’t have a single photo of 8 week old Susan. Probably because she spent 90% of the time inside her papoose being toted around and the other 10% she was either feeding (no cameras allowed) or getting her diaper changed (no cameras desired.)

After Taekwondo we all piled into cars for the drive up to Canada to visit cousins. James wanted to ride with Donna and I, so we moved his booster seat into the Gray Whale and the two nieces rode with their parents. Scott and Beth gave us James’ birth certificate for his ID and they said they would go through Canadian Customs first and tell the officer that we had permission to drive James across the border.

As we got to the border there was a few minute wait and when the Morrisons in front of us went through they headed to the left, not to the right which is the road into Canada proper. We we cleared by the same officer and told to go to the right and we could pull over and wait at the visitor center or continue on because our travel companions were selected for searching.

No reason was given for their selection, so it was entirely random or it might have been that when the CBSA Officer asked Scott if they were any weapons in the vehicle, he went, “…Aaah…I don’t think so…”

Gray Whale

-Saturday June 30th Morning-
Last year ASCO offered a deal with National Car Rental, you could join their Emerald Club at no cost and get up to a 20% discount, so I opted in thinking I’d never use it, but it might be worth checking out the next time we rented a car.

As luck would have it, for this trip to Seattle, they we a little less than the price of the second tier agency we usually use, so we stepped up a bit on rental car company ladder.

When the taxi* dropped us off at the rental car place we were surprised that there was not a soul around to help us, just an empty computer terminal and a sea of cars.

*Our plane got into Seattle at midnight Friday, so we took a shuttle to our hotel to get a 1/2 nights sleep. When we got up Saturday morning rather than take the hotel shuttle back to the airport and then get a rental car shuttle from the airport to the off-site rental place we took a taxi to make it one shorter ride instead of two longer ones. I’ve got aninteresting taxi ride story for another day.

Thinking there must be some kind of mistake we go up one flight on the escalator to the rental counters. The nice lady put down her crossword, looked at my paperwork, said that all I needed to do was go back down and pick any car from the intermediate aisle.

There were a bunch of Chevy Impalas sitting about, but then I spotted a familiar profile. It was a 2012 GLS (AKA base model), only a year newer that the Purple Whale, so at least all the controls would be right where I was used to them being. It had only 4,000 miles more on the odometer, so all the interior panel rattles were right where we were used to them being too.

Miss Me? I Didn’t Miss You…

We went out west on vacation. I had good intentions of posting a photo a day and maybe even telling some quick story of something that happened as well, but it seemed like once we off a plane in Seattle we didn’t have time to relax until we got back on a plane to come home again.

The sun comes up an hour earlier out there and sets over an hour later, so that, along with the mild temperatures, meant we used up every bit of day doing stuff, only stopping to eat and sleep. On our 7 day trip we used four for visiting 2 different wings of Donna’s family in two different countries, 3 for jamming in some touristy stuff of our own and 2 days for travel (I know that’s more than 7, but I rounded up.) For the first time in any of our numerous visits to the Pacific northwest we actually had a couple days (once again rounding up) of weather that is most associated with that reason, a light rain/mist.

Over the next week I’ll try and pretend that each day is a day from the vacation and do that thing I thought I’d do while I was on vacation.

The above is a Miata of multi-colors spotted while walking off the ferry on Whidbey Island.

6,000 Boards of Knotty Pine

We are in a cabin outside Gatlinburg, TN tonight, sharing the place with Donna’s oldest brother and his wife. We are here because we are visiting with some cousins of Donna & Jim from Canada who are in the area while on their vacation. Because we passed right by, at about the right time, we had to have lunch at our favorite place in Hendersonville, West First. They had the whole of downtown Hendersonville, NC blocked off for a classic car show, so we had to walk a little extra bit to get to the restaurant. But that was no real inconvenience because there was plenty of cool old automotive iron to see, but only one was pixel worthy, this spiritual successor to the Miata, a 1965 Lotus Elan.

The Sonata passed the six thousand mile mark somewhere between Gatlinburg and the White Oak Lodge & Resort

Crater Lake Panorama

I know, I know, I should have used a tripod and I should not be zoomed to my widest angle lens setting, but at least I managed to get a series of photos, unlike my failed attempt at the swinging bridge later on on the trip…

Cruze-N


Our rental car for the past nine days was a Chevy Cruze and it was a pleasant surprise. The seats were leather covered with built in heaters (nice in the cool northwest, but we only used them once to test them), were very comfortable and reasonably supportive. The steering was weighted nicely, plus the wheel was fat and also leather covered. Response was peppy enough and the automatic transmission was geared pretty well, seldom left hunting for just the right one. The trunk swallowed our large suitcase, two carry-ons and a laptop bag with plenty of room for any impulse souvenir purchases. I noticed only a couple of short comings, limited rear legroom with tall front seat occupants and the interior could be noisy at speed, but nothing more than expected at this size and price point.

In almost all two lane driving, with plenty of ups and downs, twisty road coast roads and slow small town driving the car returned a very nice 32.9 MPG. We drove 1624 miles and spent a total of $191, using 49.3 gallons of gas. The cheapest regular gas was $3.719 in Florence, OR and the most expensive was $4.049 in Smith River, CA. The average cost per gallon for the trip was $3.875.