I have been a slug not making daily blog entries for the last few days but that is primarily due to the mundane nature of our activities.

One day we did the laundry in the Grandy Creek TT laundry facility. The last time we were here, there was a huge commercial clothes dryer in the laundry that, through some delightful malfunction, would dry a couple regular loads of clothes for a quarter. Unfortunately, management eventually noted this money-making anomaly and now we are required to pay $1.25 for the same service.

One of the days we drove into Burlington / Mount Vernon and went food shopping. Costco and Fred Mayer didn’t get all our money but they tried. I can happily state that we now have a prodigious liquor cabinet. After the last dozen days up in Blaine, we were surprised that we have been unable, to date, to find any sweet con-on-the-cob here. The fields look about the same both places.

A couple days were rain-outs and we were obliged to be boring right around our own home. The rain last Wednesday was not the drizzly, summer version rainstorm. It rained hard, sufficient to entirely soak an old person while he took a quick lap around our 34 foot trailer.

But today was different. The weather was still crummy with intermittent rain but we went for a cruise up the south bank of the lower Skagit River anyway. We started out by driving west along the north shore on WA-20 down to Bow, where we stopped in at the cheap tobacco stand next to the Skagit Casino. The Native Americans that operate those stands do not feel compelled to collect sin, luxury, sales, pork barrel, stamp or other pesky taxes on tobacco so the prices are splendid – about 55% of what one would pay off reservation lands across the street.

We then headed south, through Sedro Woolley on WA-9 until we crossed the Skagit. There we left the main highway and headed east up the south shore. It is a magical drive with the mesmerizing turquoise waters of the Skagit on the left, striking pasture lands and forest on the right and drizzle from above. There are many stretches of highway running under the canopy of the roadside trees making it seem like we were passing through a long green tunnel, albeit a leaky one.

We continued until we got to the west shore of the Sauk River, a Skagit tributary, and headed up the Sauk for about a half dozen miles where we crossed on a one-lane steel bridge to get to the east shore. Back north on the opposite bank, we soon pulled into Rockport. Peggy and I were once going to stop at the local bar in Rockport but they had a sign posted out front that stated that “Hippies enter by the back door.” Unaware if we were hippies or not, we chose to just get back in the vehicle and head to another town where self-characterization was unnecessary before ordering a porter. In Rockport, we picked up WA-20 again for a leisurely drive back west to Grandy Creek. We have stopped numerous times in the last week to check out if there are elk browsing in the Skagit Trust’s Hurd Field, where we have spotted the North Cascade herd many times on previous visits. The elk must be dining elsewhere because they sure ain’t here this week.

We took a few pictures along the way. Click the link. https://photos.app.goo.gl/TDnU8SWtNKagpctaA