We would have spent some time performing all kinds of admirable and necessary maintenance duties around the trailer if the weather would have been nice but it wasn’t. We instead hung around the Invader all morning watching western movies. The plots were quite predictable and the outcomes sweet.
After lunchtime we decided to go exploring anyway despite the rain sometimes giving way to drizzle. We started out by driving west or down the Skagit River to Hamilton. Hamilton is more a collection of houses than a town although they do have a city hall which doubles as the Hamilton Historical Museum. There is also a small restaurant, a tavern, several very nice houses but also many residences that appear to be moldy trailer houses surrounded by rusty and decaying junk.
Not far from Hamilton, we ran across a big pasture with a herd of about 30 healthy-looking and quite tubby bison grazing on the lush grass. From the bison, we headed back up the Skagit River, not by taking WA-20 but instead by following N. Skagit River Road that runs right along the north bank of the river passing many handsome estates along the way. We finally ran out of river road and had to revert to WA-20 eastbound. We had only traveled about 5 miles when we came across a small gravel parking lot built right next to a massive open field with a nifty sign indicating this was a place to observe wildlife. We initially saw nothing but we lingered for a bit and pretty soon an elk moseyed out into the pasture from the bordering woods. Another elk followed after a few minutes and by the time we had spent a quarter hour in the parking lot, we could see not less than six big elk cows and a few calves. The grass is so tall in the field that the elk almost appeared to be laying down but their movements informed us they were merely wading in a deep sea of grass. The animals we saw today were Rocky Mountain Elk moved here from a herd in Colorado. The rest of the elk in Washington are the local, indigenous Roosevelt Elk which can be spotted all over the Pacific Northwest. We have no idea what this imported species is doing here. The range of the imported herd is from the Skagit River Valley all the way to Mount Baker, closer to the Canadian border.
Reluctantly, we left the elk and continued up to the town of Concrete. We were almost at the turnoff to Concrete when we came across a wreck on WA-20 that had demolished some poor bozo’s travel trailer and flipped his not-very-late model Ford Blazer onto its side. No other vehicles were involved so we were at a loss to explain how a motorist had managed to wreck his trailer and his truck while driving down an arrow-straight section of road. There were some very Nazi-looking Washington State Patrol officers there grilling the locals so we skated on by and headed into Concrete for a once-through.
Concrete has a theater, a few restaurants, a bakery, a hardware store, a place for music lessons, a post office and a liquor store but very few other businesses. There are some nice tidy houses here and several churches. Across WA-20 is a high school built in such a way that the road runs beneath the second floor and there is a small airport and a nifty little air museum with a good collection of old biplanes and early single-wing airplanes when you come out the other side. Concrete used to have a big cement processing facility but it is defunct now. The railroad tracks that used to go to it have been pulled up and recycled. An enormous but unused group of cement silos separate Concrete from the highway although, technically, the place should have been called Cement. The surroundings are very beautiful with mountains on all sides and a gorgeous river valley filling up the middle.
There’s a couple of photos from around the area that you can see if you click here

Yesterday, when we were hooking up our trailer to site utilities, I noticed that some metal parts had become energized, offering exciting creative dance possibilities when touching almost any exterior surface. I guess I was grounded because everything was wet and I had been strolling around in the mud and goo. I fooled around with the service panel connection and the in-line surge protector and the electrical umbilical connection at the trailer and finally was rewarded with trailer contact without busting a move.
I did note that the cordset plug at the trailer end had some unsettling tension relief and contact issues and decided to replace the whole thing, hopefully with a right angle adapter. I have seen right angle cordset ends but I’m not sure I’ve seen them in replacement ends. The search for the right angle replacement end plug was long, tedious and, ultimately, futile. We visited an electrical supply house, an RV parts seller in Burlington, a RV supply house in Mount Vernon and Camping World twice before we eventually settled on a replacement plug and right angle adapter that is very nearly sort of what we wanted. It cost less than $200, if you don’t count fuel. I will start working on the electrical system, including replacing or installing the new components, once the weather starts to cooperate. I hate being shocked.
The mountains around us are magnificent, even if the weather makes it tough to see them. If you want to see them, click here

Today was a travel day so we went through our departure procedures and lists and departed from Tall Chief RV. The weather is still lousy with drizzle most of the time and rain the rest. We were trying to go north in Washington but, due to the interesting but confusing road configurations, we immediately turned south and passed through the town of Fall River. There we skirted a roundabout and reversed direction on WA-203 toward Monroe. It is a very scenic and relatively safe two-lane road but there are no turnouts or passing lanes so massive queues result, some of them behind us today.
In Monroe, we turned west on US-2. East of Monroe, the road leads to Stevens Pass over the Cascades. We followed 2 west until we got to the busy and exciting I-5 northbound. Traffic was pretty heavy but only wrecks and a couple changing a diaper at the roadside were sufficient to provide any panicked braking.
North of Mount Vernon we turned east at Burlington on WA-20 headed up the Skagit River toward our destination near Concrete. With the skies in full drizzle, we pulled into the Grandy Creek Thousand Trails/KOA. Timing must be everything and we had great timing today because we were able to immediately pull into a still-warm front row spot that is one of about five TT spots in the campground that offer the clear shot south necessary to fully utilize our satellite dish. The park is beautiful with big conifers sprinkled between the RV sites. There are 50 amp full hookups, a laundry, wifi at the clubhouse, pools, lush grass everywhere and complete silence at night unless some retiree goes bonkers and unleashes his almost uncorked Dodge or uncorked Harley. Grandy Creek runs along the west side of the campground before flowing into the Skagit.
About a quarter mile from the campground, WA-20, part of the magnificent 400-mile long North Cascades Loop runs by and the Skagit River borders the road, at least for a while. We will be taking the drive into the North Cascades during our 11-day stay here at Grandy Creek.
I’m glad we are here but I hope the weather quits being shitty.

Our intention in coming to Tall Chief Campground in Fall City was to visit my nephew, J.R., and his partner, Maria, in nearby Auburn, Unfortunately, we had absolutely no foresight and neglected to properly determine whether my relatives were available for visiting and drinking on the same schedule as us. They weren’t.
Instead, we did some maintenance today. Peggy made Charlotte very pretty and I worked on the Barbarian Invader’s water system and some storage issues we had. Although unforeseen issues can always arise, we try to keep our stuff in good shape in the hopes that when something goes wrong, we will still have a place to stay and a vehicle to tool around in. We were pretty boring today. Tomorrow we break camp and head further north.

Since we are in a park near a major metropolitan area, it seems to us that there is no really interesting sights to go see other than city stuff. Peggy and I have lived in many cities and have found them all remarkably similar; they are good places to shop and wages are good but the traffic is terrible and everything costs a lot so we generally just stay out. We have found we prefer the benefits of the rural areas – great terrain, flora and fauna, quiet nights (unless the park is near a freeway or railway) and rare traffic problems.
Today we took a spin up the road to nearby North Bend, WA, passing by Snoqualmie Falls, a gorgeous but tourist-infected attraction in the town of Snoqualmie. There was no available nearby parking or any within a quarter mile. Peg’s sister owns a rental house outside North Bend and we drove by for no particular reason. The house is still there and looked very house-like. Right near North Bend is the imposing, craggy mountain called Mount Si, probably named after the sound all the motorists make while trapped on the single-lane, signal-challenged commute home. Due to the unique operation of the town’s traffic lights and the ponderously overloaded streets, it takes a considerable amount of time to traverse North Bend, even when it ain’t rush hour. It is probably a great place to visit but make someone else provide transportation.
Peggy and I also stopped at a drive-in called Taco Time. We both used to eat in the now-defunct Taco Time down in Coos Bay, OR, back in the dark ages and felt compelled to eat some almost Mexican-like food at the North Bend store. They serve Tater-Tots under the name of “Mexi-fries” despite them not being Mexican nor fries. Their chicken burritos are very tasty but remarkably needle-like for the $3.69 cost, plus tax. It is kind of like getting a toothpick in a paper wrapper. Down in the southwest, this same item would be called a taquito or a rolled taco.
We also took a drive over to a Trader Joe’s in a local town called Issaquah which is Indian for rich white yuppies. Range Rovers, Porsches, Audi station wagons and Mercedes Benz coupes clog the local roads which all have roundabouts at their intersections. We chose to get to T. Joe’s at 7:30 and have never been in one of their stores at a better time. We were almost alone while shopping for our loot.
The weather is still lousy – lots of rain, some wind and temperatures in the low 50s. We are crossing our fingers hoping for less mud in the next few days. Although the rain is a nuisance for us, it certainly has not hurt the local vegetation. The plants here are all bright green and appear to be open for business. The hardwood tree trunks are covered with thick mosses and lichens. The brush is so happy that it is also impenetrable once anyone leaves a cleared area. They need no signs admonishing folks to stay on the trail.
There’s a few pix if you click here

Today was a travel day and, as travel days go, it was messy. We left our Chehalis campsite, stopped at the always-pleasant waste dump and took off headed north. The weather since leaving Oregon has been on the damp side and today started out that way. By the time we had driven the 20 minutes to I-5 the weather was getting nastier with steady, moderate rain. Once on I-5, the excitement really began. The rain increased to steady, heavy rain and Washington highways are not really constructed in such a way that the accumulated rain will run off the pavement. Additionally, the roads are at such an advanced age that there are ruts in the pavement where the wheels of the vehicles have passed for so many years that any precipitation seeks the low spots resulting in two continuous trenches of water per lane.
Most of the time when towing our trailer, moisture on the road has not been a problem other than the usual hazards of sliding, skidding or jackknifing. On Washington’s roads however, continuous freeway speed driving through parallel water troughs allowed water to find a way into our trailer that had spun off the swamped tires and through a joint where the living room slide-out sidles up to the trailer’s frame. The result was some wet carpet and flooring in the living room that we discovered once we got to our destination.
Another benefit of the road construction here is the blinding spray from wheels of cars and trucks plowing the water from the depressions in the pavement and liberating clouds of vision-obscuring tan slop which coats all windshields. Furious windshield wiper operation was not sufficient to clear the vision-obscuring road slime from Charlotte’s windscreen. Even the poorly painted lines between the lanes become invisible which makes many motorists want to lift their foot from the throttle. The balking of motorists results in braking by following traffic and a general slowdown of everyone. The slowdowns do have a bright side – there is much less spray than when everyone is swimming along at 65 mph.
We try to skirt the beautiful but traffic-fubared Seattle area when we come through this part of the world. Unfortunately, the crappy weather clogged all roads in the area so a trip of less than 100 miles took 3 hours on freeways and other limited access highways. We passed some horrible-looking wrecks.
After following a circuitous route through many communities with funny names like Sammamish, we pulled into a campground in Fall City called Tall Chief. Fall City is about 15 miles or 65 minutes southeast of Seattle. The rain continued to pour down on us as we set up the Barbarian Invader. Thoroughly soaked, we eventually climbed into our traveling home and cozied up while the furnace worked on drying our soaked attire and carpet. I’m glad we had some medicinal alcohol on board.

We are still happily set up in the Chehalis Thousand Trails RV Park. We have not really done anything we deserve a reward for but we chose to reward ourselves anyway with a breakfast out at Lisa’s Diner in nearby Onanalska. Peggy chose an omelet but I, not surprisingly, selected their chicken fried steak and eggs which was delivered alongside a small pyramid of hash browns and toast. Both breakfasts were very tasty and the prices (+/- $10 a head) are pretty good, too. I had to leave some of the stuff behind when we departed. After Lisa’s, we were ready for some exploration of the surrounding countryside.
From Lisa’s, our route became quite random although we were generally trying to go northeast, passing east of Chehalis and Centralia. We climbed over many minor ridges dividing watersheds of different rivers with funny names like Skookumchuck and Newaukum. The country is quite nice to drive through with a combination of sections passing through groves of large standing timber, large plots of reforested acreage where logging and tree planting are evident, pastures with cows and big wood barns and nifty homes in the center. Birds dart between the hedges everywhere. We spotted our second bald eagle in three days. Deer seem quite content to graze in the neck-high grass along the roads. Everything is bright green except the flowers and some red leaves on the vine maples. It is pretty here.
We returned from our tour through Centralia where we stopped for diesel and groceries. As we passed through town, we became distracted by the abundance of houses along the 1st Street corridor that exhibit magnificent architectural flair. Most were wood-framed, wood-sided palaces with great porches, porte cocheres, bay and turret windows and striking roof and gable configurations. There must have been some terrific residence architects here back in the early decades of the 20th century. Their legacies survive.
I wouldn’t mind loafing a bit longer in the Chehalis area but tomorrow we are leaving to continue our quest to go north. We can always return here once it starts getting cold and we head south.
We took a few pictures along the way today and you can see them if you click here

Now that we are retired and traveling, I am surprised that we can be distracted from unfettered fooling around by nearly mindless tasks. Today we took on our poorly archived postcard collection. During our travels, when we get to a national park or monument or other culturally or visually appealing place, we look for postcards of the sight. Some are merely photographs while others are prints of paintings of outstanding features, like Half Dome at Yosemite.
Having been on the road for 3 years, the collection had grown to be quite voluminous. What the collection did not have was dates of purchase so we had to figure out what month and year we bought the postcards. That took a while. Then we actually put the postcards in chronological order so viewers could see a short visual summary of each year’s circuit.
In late 2014, we took a spin from San Diego to the Pacific Northwest, returning home in November. In January, 2015, we drove across the country from San Diego to Florida and then north to Maine, then to Ohio and Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Colorado and Arizona before returning to San Diego in November. In early 2016, we went north to Washington before turning east into the Great Basin with stops in Washington, California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada and Montana before returning to San Diego in October. In November 2016 we left San Diego again but only made it as far as Las Vegas before returning home before Xmas. On December 28, we left San Diego again and took a four month trip to warm and toasty Texas before returning through New Mexico and Arizona for our son’s wedding in April. A few days later we hit the road again and have been going north up the I-5 corridor through California, Oregon and Washington, carefully driving miles out of the way to avoid large cities.
All along the way during these trips, we purchased interesting (to us) postcards but our archiving system consisted of mostly throwing the cards in a box. Now, after today’s efforts, we have sorted our stock and put the collated piles into little brown bags and then Peggy put ’em somewhere.
This clearly important task having been completed, we decided to go fool around. We hopped into Charlotte and took a spin through the vividly green country to the southwest of Olympia, the state capitol. We took WA-12 west to WA-8 west to US-101 south to I-5 south to complete our loop. It is nice country but there is nothing remarkable here other than the colors of the ubiquitous vegetation, many beautiful ranch houses, some fruit stands and large second-growth forests. It is pretty evident the folks in this part of the world consider trees a crop and large stands of reforestation of various heights clearly show how long since the last logging occurred. It is still a very nice drive although I would not come from miles away to do it.
There are pix. Click here

The weather has been kind of funky the last few days. In Portland the the last two days it has been drizzling and it isn’t changing here. Although precipitation puts a damper on exploring, it certainly hasn’t done any harm to the vegetation. It is like a jungle here. The flowers are going bonkers, all the berry vines are squirting up, the Oregon grape is crimson and emerald green and all the grass is just short of waist-high.
We took a spin east up the Cowlitz River today. WA-12 is the highway following the river and it runs from I-5 up to Mt. Rainier, narrowly skirting the north side of the St. Helens Volcanic Park. Sharp-eyed Peggy spotted a bald eagle guarding his nest along this route. We continued on 12 until we where about halfway between the massive volcanoes where we turned around maybe 15 miles east of Morton.
We noted that all the way up the river, which is owned, dammed and managed by Tacoma Power, there are Tacoma Power campgrounds and we went into the facility near Morton called Taidnapam Park, pronunciation unknown. It is a gorgeous facility with very large RV sites, full hookups, deep shade from tall conifers, boat launches and clean restroom and shower facilities. We will put this place on our list of possible good spots to stay on a return visit. It costs $35/night for full hookups but geezers older than 62 get $5 off. The drive up WA-12 from I-5 alone is worth the trip but camping there would be superb.
Some snapshots taken along our route can be seem if you click here

Today was a travel day. We departed Sandy Riverside RV in Troutdale and headed a few miles west on I-84 before turning north on I-205, over the Columbia River and into the state of Washington. Not many miles north, we merged with I-5 and continued north along the Washington side of the Columbia until we got to the Kelso area where the river turns west and the highway goes toward Canada.
Maybe 60 miles later, we turned east near Chehalis and pulled our outfit into the Chehalis Thousand Trails RV campground. We have been here a few times before. They had water problems last year which shut down large sections of the facility but they seem to be resolved and the staff is busy clearing brush and making the joint shipshape. We got a hilltop spot where my satellite dish works which is unique here as most spots are in signal-blocking timber.
We arrived early today so we had time to fool around after we got set up. Our choice was to drive over to the tiny town of Onalaska where we know of a tip-top restaurant called Lisa’s. Lisa’s is only open until 3:00 most days but we were in before 2:00, only to find out that they had just served the last of the sausage gravy that they use on the chicken fried steak. Happily, they also have other great things to eat so I settled for a double bacon cheeseburger with a small pyramid of fries. The burger was great but I’m not supposed to eat potatoes so I felt truly remorseful as I threw too many of them down the grocery hole. We got out of there for about $25, probably because I also got a shake.
There are lots of birds around our campsite. You can see a one of them, a tubby blue jay, if you click here