Posted Wednesday, October 10, 2007

We recently returned from a month-long camping trip where we camped in 8 western states. The major points of interest were visiting with Glen, Vicki, & Alex in Snohomish, WA, Lake Chelan (WA), Hells Canyon (we approached from the Oregon side), Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Flaming Gorge (UT), and Arches National Park.

2007/08/27

As we usually do when leaving on longer trips, we left Litchfield Park after lunch, before rush hour, and drove to our Kachina Village home (about 5 miles south of Flagstaff), to spend the night. We drove up I-17 and were less than 1 mile south of Munds Park (about 10 miles south of Kachina Village), when we heard a very loud noise toward the rear of the truck, as if we had hit something fairly large. Julia asked, "What did we hit?" I was watching the road carefully, so I knew we didn't hit anything, but something definitely was amiss. As we slowed down, we didn't hear any flap-flap-flap that might be associated with a flat tire or tread separation. I took my hands off the wheel and the truck continued traveling in a perfectly straight line. The only thing that flashed through my mind was that the spare tire, which is stored under the center rear of the truck, had decided to find a new home, and had dropped to the pavement and disappeared.

We pulled off to check things out and discovered that an entire belt and tread of the right rear tire had instead found a new home, banging up the underneath side of the fender considerably in the process, but the tire was still fully inflated! We drove the short distance to the Munds Park exit and pulled into a parking lot, where I put on the spare. Of course the jack & tools were under and behind the rear seats, where the manufacturer had clamped them in, so all the junk we carry on the rear seats had to be removed first. Needless to say, those items are now more easily assessable. (Hee, hee….)

Now this happened in a pretty good spot – near an exit and in the nice cool mountains. It could have happened on the 6% grade out of the Valley where it was over 100, or on the road to Hat Point, which I'll describe later on.

2007/08/28

I can't yak on any longer without sticking some photos in here. (Hee, hee….) Here's a photo at the front of our Litchfield Park house taken on August 11th:

And here's a photo of some day lilies taken at our Kachina Village house on July 2nd:

And now back to the boring story:

A check of the underneath side of the truck seemed to indicate that all was OK, except for the damaged fender, but I did notice a pretty good dent in the tail pipe where it had been forced against the spare tire. So we took the truck this morning to the Chevy dealer in Flagstaff, to have it checked for any damaged brake lines, etc. All was OK, so we went to Discount Tire. We had already decided to replace all four tires. Man, was that place a zoo. While we were waiting, I walked over and got a haircut and Julia checked out almost every bolt of fabric in Jo-Ann's.

After stopping by the credit union and eating lunch in the camper, we were on our way at about 3 PM. Needless to say, we didn't get to our first planned stop, off I-70 in Utah. But we did get as far as Kanab, where we stopped in an adequate, but not the best private campground, so I waited until it was very dark to take a picture of our campsite, and for that reason you won’t find it in our Campground Gallery.

2007/08/29

We easily made up the lost time, and stopped at our planned destination, Thompson Flat campground, on a southern Idaho mountaintop:

Hmmmm. Not too many campers here. Nice. See most of our campsites in the gallery below:

Or you can click on any of the Gallery thumbnails to make it larger. You can then use the arrows above the small thumbnails to move through the photos. Or you can use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard.

If you click on a large photo, it will display on a dark background without the small thumbnails. You can then click to the left or right of the photo to move through the photos. Or you can use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard. Click on any photo to exit this mode.

2007/08/30

We drive straight to Snohomish on these trips, and on our way home do our sight seeing and any extra stuff that we find along the way, and add days to the trip if needed. We arrived at our campground, Hilgard Junction State Park in Oregon, about 3 (I think that's Arizona time). It was a little warm, but some thunderstorms moved in, cooling it off:

2007/08/31

There was an Oregon Trail Interpretive Center nearby, which, according to the Tour Book, opened at 8, so we drove in. But we arrived at a locked gate, with a sign listing a new opening time of 9. Oh, well. Maybe next time. As we approached Seattle on US 2, we found that the eastbound lanes had been turned into a parking lot, as it was Friday before Labor Day. How pleasant to be driving in the other direction. Glen lives out in the boonies, and we approached his house from the southeast, on lesser-known roads. No need to drive out of the way west to I-5. Seattle interstates leave much to be desired. Before we left, I printed out some Google maps to follow. We did pretty well. Traffic was heavy, but it moved smoothly. I ended up in a wrong lane once and had to go around the block, and we missed an exit because, uh, er…. Anyway, we took the next exit and got back on track. We arrived at Glen's about 5:30. Nice and cool!

2007/09/01

After visiting the morning away, we had lunch at Alfy's Pizza in Monroe, and then went to the state fair, which is called the Evergreen State Fair. We enjoyed the animal exhibits (I suppose every state fair has hundreds of rabbits, huh?) and I watched the 4-H kids run their dogs over the jumps and through the tubes. Alex and I rode on some rides together, but he had to take on many of them by himself!! Glen joined us for the bumper cars.

2007/09/02

Glen and Vicki have about 5 acres. This area is a temperate rain forest and it's amazing how fast stuff grows. Glen and Vicki's neighbor had cleared many trees, and had a couple of very large fires burning, which Vicki was monitoring, since he had insufficient clear area around the fires. We went to Collector's Choice Restaurant in Snohomish for a great fish supper. Afterwards, Glen, Alex, and I played poker.

2007/09/03

Glen and Vicki were still concerned about the neighbor's fires, which had burned through the night. They are also concerned that he might bulldoze down some of their trees. Vicki had marked the property line a couple of years ago by clearing a path and marking trees as high as she could reach. But the path had over grown, so she and I tried to find it and stomp out a rudimentary path again. I think they are going to have to have the place surveyed and more permanent markers installed. Glen grilled fish and we watched a movie and played poker. We finally got Alex to play Pit for the first time. He loved it and we played many more times.

2007/09/04

Alex has one more day before he begins seventh grade! As they had some shopping to do, we left for our grand adventure. We drove east on US 2 through a beautiful temperate rain forest, over the pass, stopped for lunch along the Wenatchee River, (wa-NA-che)

then walked a short river trail. Click on the Gallery thumbnail below to see a few photos from Glen's and the Wenatchee River:

From Leavenworth on, we found that there are many orchards and roadside fruit stands. We stopped at one and purchased some delicious nectarines and peaches. It seems that wherever there is a river, a road, and a reasonably level piece of land, it is utilized for growing fruit trees or grapes. When Julia was driving I suggested, "We should stop so that I can take a few photos of these orchards." She replied, "Why don't you just aim the camera out the window as we drive along?" So I put the telephoto lens on, set the shutter speed very high, and clicked away. Later that night at the campground, when I looked at the pictures, I was surprised to find that some of them actually were pretty good. Here's one:

At Wenatchee we visited Ohme Gardens County Park. The gardens are situated on a rocky bluff that overlooks the Wenatchee Valley:

The plantings consist mostly of evergreen trees, low-growing plants and ground covers, and grassy areas which blend with the natural rocky landscape. There are pools, waterfalls, and stone walking trails. If you like botanical gardens, this is a must stop. Click on the thumbnail below to see the Gallery:

We had planned to visit Rocky Reach Dam, but when I drew the line on the map I made it too wide, so we drove up the wrong side of the river. We drove on to Chelan (shuh-LAN)

where we picked up our boat ride tickets for the next day, and on to Lake Chelan State Park, where we had reserved two nights. The campsite that we had selected online proved to be quite nice and rather secluded:

Now that I have mentioned the town of Chelan, this would be a good time to say that many small towns along our route, from the Seattle area to Vernal, Utah, have beautified their main streets with gorgeous hanging baskets, crammed with flowering annuals. Probably most represented are trailing petunias.

2007/09/05

Our daylong boat ride on Lake Chelan, aboard the Lady of the Lake, began at 8 AM. Lake Chelan is the third deepest lake in the United States, behind Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe. It lies on the eastern slopes of the Cascades and was carved principally by a single glacier, but a second glacier got into the act in the southern portion of the lake. It's a natural lake, but a dam has raised the level of the lake by 21 feet. The lake is 51 miles long, but at its deepest point is only one mile wide.

At first the mountains are low and the climate is desert-like, and there are roads on both sides of the lake, so houses and orchards are found there:

But soon the mountains become steeper and higher, so there are no roads. There are a couple of communities up lake, but the only way to reach them is by boat, floatplane, or on foot via trails:

The trip up lake was quite cool with a very strong wind. At one point the captain slowed the boat and maneuvered closer to shore, so we could see some animals. We're pretty sure he identified them as mountain goats:

At the upper end of the lake, the boat docks at the small community Stehekin for 90 minutes, where about 75 - 85 people live year round:

We took a school bus (Yes! There are cars there, too. All large items are transported by barge.) tour of he town, stopping at Rainbow Falls:

and the Stehekin Pastry Company (Yum!). The House that Jack Built sells local crafts:

This is a detail of a quilt that was on display:

You don't have to pack according to Post Office regulations if you want stuff transported by the Lady of the Lake:

It was on Lake Chelan that we first encountered smoke from wildfires burning in several states. Here some smoke has drifted down from the Holden area, but it makes an interesting photo:

On our return trip, as we neared Chelan, these guys enjoyed jumping our wake:

View the full Lake Chelan Gallery here:

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