October 3, 2020
Whew, what a summer!
I see my last blog note was posted on June 1st so I have
clearly joined a what is I suspect is a group of boat bloggers who have let our
blogs lapse with Covid-19 fatigue.
Someday in the future if someone looks back and reads these notes
remember that the event of this summer has been trying to figure out how to
stay engaged with the world while parks, theaters, performances of all kinds,
and world borders have been shut to try to slow the spread of Covid-19 while we
await the arrival of a tested vaccine.
To top that off the United States faces the worst divisive feelings I
have ever experienced as our president fans the flames of discontent on a daily
basis. Yesterday after months of downplaying the importance and science behind
our knowledge of Covid-19, he himself became infected. In my personal journey I’m finding my recovery from cancer treatment to be much more drawn out than I had hoped for
and so join many folks with some feeling of depression. Finally, I was having to do a lot of touch-up
to photos in preparation for posting them as the forest fire smoke blowing from
fires in California, Oregon, and Washington obscured the sky as far east as Nebraska
during our travels The common theme on social media is that 2020 has been a
real bust of a year.
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| One of many attempts to help lighten the mood while reminding folks to "social distance" to help minimize the spread of covid. |
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| Clarice has a "new" 3/4 size sewing machine for the trailer that has come in very handy for making face masks. |
Before moving on - let's take a break for babies!
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| To start our newest granddaughter H. is sitting up, giggling, and making fun noises. |
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| Our goddaughter Jamie has a new daughter |
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| Lots of baby seals on the log booms around our marina in Olympia. This little guys mom apparently decided he was safest on the dock - we suspect he was less than a day old. |
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| Baby alpacas are really cute! |
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| It took this little boy a few minutes to decide he could touch the alpaca but they were very friendly. |
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| We took the "nursery tour" option which included this 1 hour old baby. |
And lets go from one end of the age spectrum to the other. One advantage of being in Olympia is it isn't too far to go visit my Mom and take her for a picnic at Point Defiance Park near where she and dad lived when they first came to Washington from Michigan and near my first home.
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| The rose and dahlia gardens were in full bloom when we took my 93 year old mother for a picnic in the park. We all kept our masks at-the-ready in case we ended up in a more crowded area. |
Salish Aire is currently moored in Olympia Washington at the very very southern end of the Salish Sea within sight of the Washington State Capital building.
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| Dinner with Etienne at Tugboat Annie's restaurant at our marina in Olympia |
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| The Washington State Capital Campus is short bike ride away |
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| Looking back from the state capital campus over Capital Lake to our marina in the distance. |
Remember when we last posted that we were taking short test runs with our new truck – trailer combination in preparation for longer term explorations on land. Going back to our time in Mexico, I realized that I could only take so much tropical heat and so Clarice and I agreed to base Salish Aire in the Salish Sea and use it during the spring, summer and fall to explore the west coasts of Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska then during the grey and drizzle of Puget Sound winters we would see how we liked “land yachting” for a change of pace. This summer our plans for a longer trip north on the boat were not working out with Covid so we used the trailer more than we had planned.
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| A trailer outing to the North Cascades |
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| Even with his bad knee Jarvis still loves to explore woodland trails |
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| "Breaking in" the trailer at our grandson's mother's property |
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| Visiting our grandson's mother's property |
It is interesting how snobbish we have become about what constitutes a “crowded anchorage” but the islands in the San Juan archipelago met pretty much everyone’s definition of crowded. In one bay that would during a normal summer have maybe 20 boats in it we counted about 100. Lots of folks who already owned boats recognized what we already knew which was that boating is a great way to get outside and be appropriately “socially distanced” to avoid virus exposure. On top of that boats (and RVs) have been selling like hotcakes and finally with the border to Canada closed a HUGE number of boats that would normally go north as far as Alaska for the summer were stuck south of the 48th parallel.
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| A short hike on Sucia Island in the San Juans archipelago |
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| Anchorages were packed compared to a normal summer |
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| Virginia V, the last operating steamship of the historic Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet pulling in in front of us in Poulsbo |
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| I was able to board the Virginia V and watch the steam engine operate. In a way of thanks I dove in my SCUBA gear to get a line they had lost in the water. |
Much of the summer we had our 17 y/o grandson Etienne living with us. The agreement was that he would be an extra set of hands recognizing that I was going to be pretty wimpy after my radiation therapy and he would get a chance to visit with us for an extended time. While he was with us we took Salish Aire to the San Juan Islands and took our first somewhat extended test run in the trailer (now called "Salish Airstream"). Our route took us across southern eastern Washington, past the Hanford nuclear reservation where the first weapons grade plutonium was refined, on to southern Idaho where we stayed in Craters of the Moon National Park (and tested our generator / air conditioner when the temperature reached 110 F). From there we went to Grand Teton National Park and then north Yellowstone National Park and finally back to Olympia.
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| Hiking up an old wagon road in Eastern Washington |
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| Historic Hanford reactor |
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| Craters of the Moon National Park |
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| Moonrise Craters of the Moon National Park |
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| Bruneau Dunes State Park Idaho |
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| Bruneau Canyon Idaho |
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| Bruneau Canyon Idaho |
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| Silver City a historic mining town miles up challenging dirt roads at 6000 ft of elevation in the Owyhee Mountains of Idaho (Owyhee County was named by some miners from Hawaii) |
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| Church in Silver City |
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| Grand Tetons National Park |
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| Yellowstone National Park |
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| Yellowstone National Park |
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| Yellowstone National Park |
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| When Clarice and Etienne went to get a buffalo's photon they didn't expect him to be standing on the boardwalk in front of them! |
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| Yellowstone Falls |
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| Mud pot Yellowstone National Park |
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| Yellowstone Canyon |
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| Yellowstone National Park |
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| Yellowstone National Park |
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| Old Faithful Yellowstone National Park |
Camping has been much the same whenever we tried to get into major campgrounds. We have found that enjoying out of the way “boondocking” type camping has helped a lot as we have moved about. For example there were no first-come-first-serve campgrounds open in Yellowstone and all of the reservation campgrounds were booked through the end of the season but we were able to get some really amazing sites by using “disbursed” camping sites which were often prettier and were free. Finally we have joined HarvestHosts.com who provides names of wineries, farms, and places like museums where you can park an RV for the night with only the expectation that you buy a minimum of $20 worth of goods and/or services. Our first experience at a HarvestHosts site was to set up with about 6 other RVs in the far back pasture of an alpaca ranch. It was a great experience and I now have some cozy alpaca wool socks.
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| View from one of our many free campsites |
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| Disbursed campsite near the Grand Tetons |
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| Camping in an alpaca pasture |
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| Jarvis gets a close look at a curious alpaca |
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| Another HarvestsHost.com site was The Fit Quilter |
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| This was our campsite near the south entrance to Yellowstone (there were NO campsites available inside of the park) It had been burned off but was now covered with meadows and wildflowers. We and one other site each had a sturdy picnic table, a bear proof food storage locker, a fire pit, and shared a concrete walled outhouse which was cleaned daily by the National Park Service and it was free (as was our daily entrance into Yellowstone with Clarice's lifetime senior pass.) |
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| The sign next to the trailer says this is an "official" dispersed campsite and asks that we leave it like we found it. |
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| Many small Midwest towns have city parks with free camping. This one had ballfields, a putt-putt golf course, a frisbee golf course, horse shoe pits, AND a tree with an owl. |
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| We took one last boat trip to welcome some friends we had met during our Mexico adventures who also originally came from the Salish Sea. They had planned to spend 2 years in the South Pacific but on arrival learned they were not welcome because Covid had made itself known. Instead they had to sail with the trade winds north to Hawaii and on to Kodiak Island Alaska and then back south to Washington to complete their detour. The photo was taken through a 400 mm lens just after they had appeared out of a fog bank near Victoria. It was after dark before we closed in on them in our power boat as they had good wind and were using their motor as well. |
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| Our departure was delayed a couple of days as Jarvis had emergency surgery for an anal abscess. |
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| He didn't like the "girl dog" diaper but it was better than the "collar of shame". |
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| An orange moon (after days of orange suns) due to smoke from west coast forest fires |
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| The main hot spring in Hot Springs State Park in downtown Thermopolis Wyoming |
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| Water that is not diverted to the soaking pools and water park in Hot Springs State Park flows into the Yellowstone River. |
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| "Hell's Half Acre" an area much like the Badlands of South Dakota is only a few yards from the highway but could easily be passed by and never seen. |
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| The entry to the Wind River Canyon on the Wind River Indian Reservation |
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| Camping along the Yellowstone River in a free city park. |
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| We learned that friends lived within minutes of a favorite Corps of Engineers campground on the Mississippi River after we had left the campground last year. This year we made sure to visit them. |
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| Salish Airstream serves as our primary quarantine location at our daughter Erin's family's home. |
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| Finally grandchildren time |
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| Grandkids V&H assemble a kit we had ordered for them |
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| Erin and Clarice canning 40 liters of grape juice from a local vineyard. |
From here we plan to head south following the Appalachian mountain chain and enjoying the fall leaves but avoiding major cities. In reality to use the immortal words of Indiana Jones, “We are making this up as we go along!” and having a lot of fun doing it.
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