First off, the cats did not want to come in. It was a pain getting them in for the evening. We went to sleep relatively early, but at some point in the middle of the night, Joe heard growling. He swore it was a bear. We turned the light on and see all four cats hunched down on the floor. Eventually we heard the growl again, and it was Curly, with a mouse in his mouth.... He kept letting it go, it would run like crazy, he would chase it, catch it again, then eventually let it go. I finally got a hold of it when it didn't run off right away and threw it out the door (sorry Curly).
We tried to sleep again. Pickles came and lay down between us, purring like crazy. All of a sudden, she jumps at the vent! I look at the back of the RV, and the other three cats are sitting on the table, staring up at the ceiling. It took a bit, but eventually we could hear little feet running around on the roof. I don't know if it was squirrels or mice or what, but it was incredibly annoying.
They calmed down again, only to start running around in the front an hour or so later. I kept watching for someone to come out from there carrying something, but never did. Eventually, Joe said, we're going. I ran outside, put the bike back in the rack, grabbed the solar shower and off we went. There was a very large parking area right before the highway, so we stopped there and went back to sleep. No more crazy noises, so we finally got some sleep.
-Miranda
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We've been in the national forest near Mount Baker since we left Bellingham. We left the spot we were at yesterday in order to go for a hike. Joe had checked out Google Earth and it looked like there was a trailhead for parking, then a 3 mile or so hike up a large trail (Google Earth said it was a trail, but it looked like a road) from there to "Twin Lakes", then from there, there was another hike to a peak. We got to the trailhead parked, then started walking. Unfortunately, the 'trail' was actually a road that went all the way up to Twin Lakes. We walked probably half way before a pickup was driving up the road and let us hop in the back. Looking at the road, there's no way the RV would have made it anyway.
While we were still in Bellingham, we had stopped at an outdoors store and ended up getting a camelpack (hydration pack). That was during one of our walks downtown. Before we left, we stopped at REI to get me one. We used those during the hike. It was a huge help to not have to carry the water in nalgenes.
Anyway, Twin Lakes was gorgeous. There was snow up there and a number of areas for tent campers. It was a pretty busy place. We headed up the trail, which had gorgeous views basically the entire way. There was one sketchy spot where we had to cross snow because it covered the trail, but that went fine. We met a guy part way up that told us the rest of the way was blocked by snow that was too precarious to pass. We went up to get a good view from where he was standing, had a small lunch we had brought with,, then decided to try the other trail we had seen (it bypassed one of the precarious snow spots). There was no way around the next snow spot and it wasn't a good view, so we headed back down.
It had started sprinkling, but we started walking down the road anyway, figuring someone would be down that we could hitch a ride with. It started raining harder, so we stopped under a tree and a large pickup showed up not long after. She was kind enough to pick us up. On the way down, we met someone coming up who asked her if she had a chain, because someone got their truck stuck hanging off the road. She fortunately did. And apparently she had pulled people out of these types of situations many times before.
We got to where these guys with their little Toyota truck were. The passenger side of the pickup was completely off the road. With one pull, it swung down some so the front end was completely off the road. The guys jumped on the back bumper to get that down further while she slowly pulled. When it was mostly back on the road, one of the guys jumped in so he could hit the brake once it was completely on the road. Hopefully they're more careful about where they try to pull off the road in the future.
Since it was raining, we just went to a nearby sandpit. We were having issues finding fast internet, and we were running low on power, so figured that would be good enough. We left this morning. It's still pretty cloudy, but it looks like it might clear up a little. At least enough to get some more sun. Joe had found a neat area a couple days earlier when he had gone biking, so we went there to check it out. There's a spot at the end of a relatively short road that is right next to the river, but has a number of camp spots. It was pretty busy when he had checked it out, but as we were heading that way, about 6 cars left. We went there and all the people are pretty much on one side, so we picked the spot farthest away. Joe went to talk to the nearest neighbors, letting them know we're letting the cats out and it turns out that it is the same two guys that we helped pull of the road yesterday. Anyway, they said there's a bit of a mouse problem.
We'll probably just be here until the morning, but we'll see.-Miranda
The view from the first nice view point we went to. Those mountains are Canada.
Mount Baker
The Twin Lakes. You can sort of see the camping/parking area also.
Joe and the snow crossing we did do.
The RV at the first trailhead on the road.
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We spent a number of days in Bellingham parked outside Rod and Sarah's house. They were quite kind and we had a great time chatting with them quite a bit. We mostly focused on working the first day we were there. On Sunday, we went out to a very good sushi restaurant with Rod and Sarah. Afterwards, we went to Mallards, a local ice cream shop. They home make all their ice cream. There are all sorts of neat flavors. On our way back to the house, Rod pointed out a number of restaurants that have good vegetarian food. So, Monday, we decided to walk to one of them to try it out. Unfortunately, it ended up being close, so we headed the rest of the way downtown. There is another vegan restaurant down there. The food was decent (Joe had a sea vegetable burger and I had a walnut, and various other things, burger) but the service was pretty awful. We did a bunch more exploring and eventually walked back home. For dinner that evening we took our bikes and headed in the opposite direction to Fairhaven. We walked around a bunch then ended up eating at a different sushi place. It was also quite good and they had a couple different interesting rolls that we tried.
On Tuesday, we walked with Rod to the vegan restaurant that we had tried to go to the day before. The food was definitely interesting. Some was good, some was a little too odd. We continued on to downtown again and eventually stopped at Mallards to get some 'ice'. It's basically like a sorbet.
That evening we had a great dinner a couple that knew Joe back when he used to spend summers here through his uncle, Michael. The food was excellent and it was fun chatting. I even made them some homemade chocolate pudding for dessert.
We left this morning because we were hoping to find some forest in order to let the cats out. We are near Mt. Baker now in a neat camping spot (there's a small clearing and a fire ring) not far from the nearby river. Unfortunately, we got here too late to let the cats out, so they're going a little nuts. Tomorrow morning we'll let them out. Hopefully they won't wake us up at 5, but I'm not too hopeful. One issue here though, is the flies are insane! We can't spend any time outside, otherwise they swarm around you. We do have some internet, so we'll see how it goes. Hopefully we can stay here a couple days.
-Miranda
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We ended up heading to Mazama and stayed at Joe's friend's place there. He has two kids who were a lot of fun. Wiley (9 year old) baked brownies one morning and even gave us a baggy of some that were left before we headed out on Friday. Maya (12 year old) was giving a riding lesson to the son of her cross country coach when we were leaving too, which was fun to watch some.
We spent a few days there. One of the days we decided to bike up to Goat's Peak. Our plan was to bike up to the trail head, then hike up that. Well, the bike trip ended up being 20 miles roundtrip with an elevation gain of about 2500 feet. We only made it to an overlook. That was far enough.
We had a lot of fun in Mazama and Rob's family was very welcoming, but it was supposed to be crazy hot there on Friday, so we left to get to the, hopefully, cooler coast. There were a number of neat trails in the forest along the highway, but we were still pretty sore (and slightly sun burnt) from our bike ride the day before, so we just got out to check out one overlook and got out at a different place to check out a stream.
We stopped at Diablo Lake again. We went there during our first trip back in 2007, but it was raining at the time.
We wanted to find someplace to stay, so we picked a road that said it lead to a hiking trail to Thornton Lake. We made it at least a few miles up the road (pretty steep) when we got to a section that was essentially 45 degrees. The RV wouldn't do it, so we backed up to a wide spot, turned around and decided to stay there. We were curious about the rest of the road though, so we took Curly out with us and headed up the road. About an hour later we reached the trail head.... The hike was a "strenuous day or overnight hike". Oh well. We headed back down the road, but Curly decided he didn't want to follow anymore. Joe finally picked him up and carried him for a bit. Curly started freaking out, so Joe eventually put him down. He ran straight for the side of the road, started running back up the road, then all of a sudden, pounced. He came out with a vole in his mouth! He would pick it up, follow us for a bit, then set it down, chase it, pick it up again, follow us, etc. He did that for a few minutes, then sat down and ate it.... After that, he followed us really well. Apparently he just had to get some of his energy back.
The next day we left right away and made our way to Burlington where we had lunch at a very cute cafe. We then headed to Bellingham and are now staying outside the house of a friend of Joe's. At this time, we've basically just been working since we didn't have internet at all on Friday. We don't really have plans for how long we're staying here yet.
-Miranda
PS Apparently I've been slacking on uploading photos, so some of these are a little old.
This is a photo of the two of us during our long hike at Sherman Pass.
The rope swing we found on Fish Lake.
The top of the national forest road. It's around 6000 feet.
The view of the overlook we biked up to.
Maya riding her horse, Breyer.
The road we came up at Washington Pass.
Diablo Lake.
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We did end up leaving our spot across from Kettle Falls. We didn't feel comfortable letting the cats out with people coming and going on ATVs. We continued along Highway 20 up the mountain. Part way up, we stopped at a free, national forest campground where there were a couple trails. The campground was full, so we decided to just go on a hike.
We started the hike and could go either towards Sherman Pass or towards Jungle Hill. We first headed towards Sherman Pass, then realized that was probably just going up to the highway. After walking for around half a mile, we turned around and went back. The other trail was 3.9 miles. Mostly uphill. Along the way, we kept running into bikers heading down the trail. We finally asked one of the guys and it turns out there was some festival going on. They all took a shuttle up to the top of Sherman Pass, then took one of the trails to the one we were on. So, they had a nice bike ride downhill the enture way.
We ended up hiking about 9 miles total. We're still sore. Afterwards we stopped in Republic to find dinner. There was a pizza and sandwich place and a Mexican place. Joe really wanted pizza and I wanted Mexican, so we had a small meal at the Mexican place, then Joe went back to get a pizza. We did some work and headed out to the next chunk of national forest to find a place to stay for the night. We ended up finding a road that dead ends and just stayed there. One neat thing was the stream that was nearby. Around it was filled with strawberry plants. Too bad most weren't ripe yet.
The next day we headed to Tonasket. We parked on the side of the street using someone's wifi, and got caught up with work. There was a small natural foods coop just a block away, so we did get some cold, fruit bars since it was incredibly hot. Our next plan was to head down a 41 mile national forest road (National Forest Development Rd 37) that goes through a pass that is around 6000 feet, so we knew we weren't going to have internet that night or the next day. We found a place to pull off and have dinner, but we didn't feel comfortable letting the cats out, so after eating, we kept going. It was already 8pm which made for a gorgeous view of the sunset behind the Cascades during our drive. We made it to the top and over. It was getting dark, so we found a spot to sleep for the night. The next morning, we left again and ended up finding a small road that went below the main road. It lead to, basically, a campsite right near a creek. The cats have been loving getting to spend the entire day outside.
We went for a walk this afternoon along the creek. There are two streams that meet where we are. One of them has a waterfall that Joe noticed. We decided to hike towards that. After getting across the stream, we heard Curly crying. We were worried he had tried to cross on his own, so Joe went back to get him. He was still on the shore, fortunately, but Joe grabbed him anyway and put him on his shoulders. Curly followed us throughout our walk. It was pretty fun. Even when we were walking in the stream, he followed us along the shore.
We are now sitting in Winthrop using some internet. It's a pretty cute town, though touristy. Once we get some work caught up, we'll probably walk around a bit.
-Miranda
The place we stayed near the top of the pass.
Our view from that spot.
The creek right next to the spot we stayed at last night.
Finally got a decent photo of Zoe!
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