Today we gathered up all our stuff and departed from Chehalis Thousand Trails. However, our drive was not long because we only drove over a ridge into the Cowlitz River watershed and about 20 miles later we pulled into the Paradise Thousand Trails Campground in Silver Creek. It is difficult to know when one is in Silver Creek because the downtown consists of a crummy Chinese restaurant, a Mobil fuel station and a very small post office.

Paradise campground is located on the side of a hill offering many parallel pull-through spaces, full hookups in most locations and an absolutely spectacular view from the top of the ridge. Looking mostly east from the campground entrance, one can see the emerald Cowlitz River Valley, azure Mayfield Lake and Mount Rainier, Mount Adams and Mount St. Helen’s on the horizon. All three of these snow-capped mountains are volcanoes – I think Mount Adams is dormant but the other two terrify locals every so often by ejecting frightening clouds of smoke and ash every time they forget that these things could kill them at any time.

It is still raining. We prepped a bit for departure but did little else.

The weather was still lousy but we felt like we needed a break from the confines of our 288 square foot lodgings so we took a spin into the nearby town of Centralia. Centralia is right next to and just north of Chehalis and about a dozen miles northwest from our campground.

The road there is rural almost all the way (unless you go over to I-5) and we like the bucolic scenery along the way. We zigzagged through Chehalis and soon arrived in the historic and quite gorgeous downtown area of Centralia. Although the downtown area is lovely, is was still raining steadily so we found a place called the Olympic Club right on the main drag and ducked inside for a reward. The Olympic Club is an ancient facility where loggers and millworkers spent many evenings in the ornate surroundings. We cozied up in a nice tuck-and-roll pleather-lined booth and ordered a flight for Peggy and a porter for me. The facility is nice but their beer products were only so-so.

The magnificent interior of the place more than makes up for their nominal beer. There is a gigantic wood stove in the main meeting room, a spacious dining facility, two ample bars and a theater sporting ample reclining chairs for their thrice-weekly movie showings. There are stunning stained glass chandeliers and a nifty cigar store in the entry foyer. However, the best part of this place has to be their downstairs restrooms. The mens’ restroom has two massive and ornate urinals unlike any I have seen elsewhere and I’ve been in many johns before. The womens’ restroom sink plumbing looks like the display section from a Home Depot and offering confused users an unlimited variety of ways to wash their hands. The womens’ john was more recently installed because it used to be verboten to bring ladies into the Club and, therefore, a womens’ restroom was unnecessary. Fortunately, reasonable heads prevailed and girls can drink in the Club now.

After considerable wandering and malingering inside the Olympic, we went back out into the dismal rain and drove back to Chehalis TT to digest.

We got some pix inside the Olympic. Click the link. https://photos.app.goo.gl/HKXoD2mGf7B2RJh47

We spent the last couple of days hanging around the trailer. It has been raining pretty steadily and we don’t venture out in foul weather unless there is a brewery or some other reward involved.

Peggy was a bit under the weather yesterday and I got to watch the NASCAR race today but other than that, we were boring or more boring than normal.

We were pretty dull again today. The weather turned ugly and rained last night. There was plenty of thunder and lightning. We figured we might as well do stuff that didn’t require good weather.

Peggy was very sweet and took all our clothes over to the laundry and made them unstinky. I changed out our shower head. In our shower, which for a big bozo like me is like standing in a coffin, we had a very lightweight but disappointing hand wand type showerhead that would emit water but not completely shut off when commanded. The result was, for some unknown reason, when the shower head valve was re-opened by some soapy bather the first water out was scalding hot. This could be annoying when the water was directed at certain spots. Turning the old shower head on and off also required superhuman strength or voodoo to make it operate.

A couple months ago, we picked up a new, improved shower head assembly when bumbling about in a Camping World store in Mount Vernon. We knew we would be replacing our former, miserable shower head soon but experience has taught us to never do any plumbing on an RV unless within 25 miles of an open Home Depot or other suitable hardware joint. Almost without fail, anything will go wrong and one or more trips to the Home Depot will be required before the plumbing repair is watertight.

However, today’s plumbing work went off without a hitch or a leak. It was almost like someone else, like a plumber, did the work, Nobody is more delightfully surprised than us.

Today was Reward Day. We rewarded ourselves by reading, watching movies and drinking. It was terrific. It was very nice sitting outside watching the birds.

Today was another travel day. We packed up all our camping stuff, hooked up the trailer and pulled out of the Diamond Point RV Park near Sequim. I didn’t regret leaving – for some reason, maybe the sardine can proximity of campers, I was not thrilled with this RV park although they had good utility hookups, cable TV and good satellite reception. They also had RV spaces that I found quite challenging to back into, souring me on the facility.

We quickly got back on US-101, this time going south for the first time in a long while. Instead of crossing Puget Sound and driving down I-5, we elected to stay on the Olympic Peninsula for our southbound travel. Using this route, we were able to completely avoid the hellish traffic nightmare that is Seattle. 101 south on the Peninsula is a gorgeous but curvy road with very few straight sections longer than about 200 yards. We also noted the paving surface was quite bumpy and not even close to being planar. We stopped for a restroom break near the south end of the Hood Canal and found that some drawers and items in the trailer had been tossed around during the trip. Nothing broke so we were good to continue.

After the stop, we headed southeast toward the interstate, emerging from rural America at the capital city of Olympia which we skirted before getting on I-5 south. From there it was about a 45 minute drive to the city of Chehalis, where we left the freeway and headed toward Mount St. Helens and the Chehalis Thousand Trails.

We had to wait a bit at the entry booth but the poor grunt that operates the facility finally showed up and soon we were roaming the campground, looking for that good RV spot. We eventually found one at the top of the hill with great satellite antenna reception but no sewer and no WiFi. We will contact the honey wagon operator tomorrow so we don’t have to pull out the trailer out to dump the tanks in a few days. The WiFi we can access in the facility activity center a short drive down the gravel road from our site. The TV reception is superb. We may have found one of the very few sites with an unobscured view to the south, a requirement for satellite antenna operation. Strangely, it is only two spots away from a site we stayed in back in 2017.

Now that everybody’s kids are back in school, it is much easier to find a variety of nice RV spots. Maybe we should go to year-round schools in the U.S.

We took a spin into the city of Port Townsend today. We passed through it quickly a few days ago when we arrived on the ferry from Coupeville on Whidbey Island but decided it looked quite interesting so we made a return trip.

Port Townsend was a massive shipping, wood products and boat building city in the past. Now the mills and most of the ships are gone but the town is still gorgeous. The town sports a terrific variety of old wooden houses that have been meticulously maintained, stunning downtown masonry structures and a long waterfront area with boats of all kinds both in the water and hauled out on land. Big, multi-masted sailing ships were being spiffied up by crews of yacht yard gorillas sanding and grinding and painting. We spotted a lighting and antiques store where the owner proudly displays the movie producers and movies that have used his gorgeous vintage lighting fixtures and household hardware in their pictures. There was a big list.

After quite a bit of cruising around, Peg and I decided we needed a reward for our efforts so we pulled into the Port Townsend Brewery where Peg had a flight and I ordered a pint of porter. The bar was nice and cozy and the beer was good but no match for Deschutes Black Butte Porter from Bend, OR. I guess I’m spoiled.

We got some pix. Click the link. https://photos.app.goo.gl/hLRX6LmkEqqVVsaZ9

Today we were back in explorer mode so we decided to take a spin into the Olympic National Park, specifically to Hurricane Ridge. We started by getting from our current RV spot at Diamond Point RV Park up the serpentine road to US-101 which we took west to the city of Port Angeles. There we turned onto Hurricane Ridge Road. At the bottom we were pretty close to sea level (Strait of Juan de Fuca level here) and we started to steady climb up the first five miles until we got to the Park Service toll booth where there was about a half hour backup in the traffic line. It was a gorgeous day today so we supposed that lots of folks had decided to go up to the Ridge to enjoy the view.

Once we got very close to the toll booth, a National Park Ranger was stationed alongside the traffic line who noted that we had a geezer pass to cross onto federal properties for free and she waved us through. Free access to National Parks is one of the very few benefits of getting older.

The road continues to climb through several climate zones before emerging at 4500′ almost above tree line where there is a parking lot and many folks wearing funny garb usually associated with pesky ferners. We heard Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and quite a few other languages that we couldn’t understand emanating from the myriad of folks on top of the mountains enjoying the view.

From the visitor center at the end of the road, Hurricane Ridge occupies the entire southern horizon from west to east. There are some glaciers clinging to the sides of the taller peaks and visible below is a massive old-growth forest. There were animals everywhere. We spotted hordes of deer and noted some gray jays hanging around the visitor area, dive bombing and snatching loose food from those foolish enough to keep their grub in plain sight. We even met some nice doggies who had accompanied their humans to the top of the hill.

The scenery is spectacular there. Click the link to see photos. https://photos.app.goo.gl/BauXh53anGufpUEi7

Today we intended to take part of the day to lounge around the trailer to watch the NASCAR Darlington race. It was supposed to start at 3:00 PM but, due to the effects of Hurricane Dorian which is decimating the Bahamas, the race was delayed by rain. It ultimately got going by about 7:00 and lasted until after 11:00 PM Pacific time so there is nothing to report for today. Except that Peggy was more than reasonable about letting me loaf all day. It’s NASCAR’s fault.