We had a travel day today. Grandy Creek RV Park has full hookups so we were able to get going without too much delay. We did note a low tire on the trailer at departure so we drove east on WA-20 to a Shell station where we were required to donate $1.50 to an air compressor with a sign on the front that stated the a fraction (and probably a small one) of the money going in the slot would be given to an obscure charity. We filled the trailer tire to the specified pressure and headed back west on 20.
We soon came to Sedro-Woolley where we accessed I-5 south for the beginning of our trip toward San Diego. After only about 55 terrifying minutes on I-5, we turned east on WA-2 where the traffic became even scarier. After only a few years being frightened off our lives, we arrived in Monroe where we turned south on WA-203. We sort of took the long way to Fall City because it keeps us from going through the Seattle metropolitan area, a funhouse of signalless lane changes, circuitous exits, abrupt lane disappearances and the ever-popular variable speed limits, all installed on the sides of steep hills. For cowardly outsiders, like us, it is a treacherous path through a hailstorm of surprises and hard braking.
Eventually, we pulled up at Tall Chief RV Park where we have discounts both through Thousand Trails and RPI. The RPI discount is better; we paid $10 per night, plus tax. We were here in 2014. North Bend, Snoqualmie Falls and lots of great scenery can be found traveling in any direction from this park.

We continued our exploring in the Concrete area by driving north in an attempt to make a loop near Baker Lake. We could see Baker Lake from our perch on Mount Baker about a week ago but it was a just a small pond in the distance. Today we found that it actually quite a bit larger.
We started the day in a bakery called 5b which is located in nearby Concrete. Their pigs in a blanket was only $7.50 and was quite good but served without hash browns. From there, we took another spin through Concrete which took about 4 minutes before heading west down Highway 20 and then north on Baker Lake Road. It is a very nice drive through big groves of maple and hemlock trees and soon we were alongside Lake Shannon that, before today, we did not know existed. Between Lake Shannon and the slightly more distant Baker Lake, there is a tall dam operated by Puget Energy or something that holds back Baker which ended up being huge. We continued around Baker Lake’s northwest edge enjoying the wonderful scenery until the road sort of crapped out. We turned around and headed back south but we pulled out to check out the numerous campgrounds along the shore of the lake. At one of them, we noted tiny creatures migrating across one of the gravel roads. Investigating further, we determined the critters were tiny toads on a lemming-like exodus from one side of the road to the other. Several of the tiny pilgrims were noted that had been martyred by being crushed by automobile tires. It was unfortunate because the half-inch runts were actually kind of cute.
We kept on going south but turned out to investigate the dam. Our Gazetteer showed that there was a shortcut road that would take us back to Concrete but we needed to pass over the dam to access it. We followed the gravel road we encountered after passing over the very skinny top of the dam and followed it for some distance before meeting an oncoming vehicle on the skinny road. Since we had to pass very carefully, we had ample time to speak with the nice folks in the other vehicle and found out that the road we were following would not lead us to Concrete. After a short distance, we found a spot in the road wide enough to turn our F-250 around and headed back down toward the dam. Right near the dam, we encountered some dam workers who told us the only other road we could use as a shortcut back to Concrete was a good road except the portion where the bridge was washed out.
Back over the dam we went and then headed back toward our RV park by backtracking down the same road we came up. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful drive and was quite pleasant even though there is only one way in and out.
We still had plenty of daylight left when we made it back to Highway 20. Fortunately, we had noted during our cruise through Concrete yesterday that there is an aircraft museum across the street from Concrete High School. We decided to give it a try. We had a bit of trouble finding anybody home when we wandered onto the grass airfield but were soon directed by an aviator hiding in the back of his hanger toward another non-descript person near another hanger. The second guy was a sort of guide but really he just pointed out the buildings where the vintage planes were stored and then sat down.
We wandered through a half dozen buildings and saw many vintage aircraft, most of them from the 1930s and early 1940s.. They are very well restored and quite beautiful. About time we had seen all the planes, the alleged guide received a flurry of phone calls from friends telling him their plans for watching tonight’s Seahawks game were changing and from his wife informing him that he needed to take care of the kids. He looked pretty desperate so we let him go, dropped $10 in the donation box and headed home.
Concrete seems like an unlikely place to find a vintage aircraft museum, especially one located at the end of a dead end across the street from the high school. Maybe they have pilot training at Concrete High. Lord knows they have ample aircraft.
There is a picture of one of the roads through the hardwoods available if you click here

Two years ago, when we passed through this part of the world, we drove up Highway 20 from Concrete into the North Cascades. Back then it was raining and cloudy but the scenery was magnificent. We repeated our drive into the North Cascades National Park again today but the weather was absolutely gorgeous and the scenery was still spectacular.
We started our drive with a circuit through the town of Concrete which took about 5 minutes because Concrete is pretty small. The census indicates only 790 people claim this town as their home. The Baker and Skagit Rivers have a confluence here. Above Concrete, Highway 20 runs adjacent to the Skagit River as it passes through the narrow bottom lands between steep gorge walls until the road starts climbing slowly northeast of Marblemount. We tried to stop in Marblemount at a place famous for their cinnamon rolls but, of course, they had sold out by the time we rolled into their lot at just before noon. We were forced to drive on upriver without the tasty heart plugs sold at the bakery.
Soon, some small hydroelectric projects run by Skagit City Light (Is there a Skagit City?)can be spotted along the road and they back up both Diablo and Ross Lakes which are filled with amazingly colored turquoise water. I understand the water has this color due to the nature of its source – glacial runoff and tiny rock particles suspended in the water.
We continued up WA-20 past Ross Lake about 10 or 15 miles until we decided to turn around and head back toward Concrete. The drive coming back down offers fabulous vistas of snow-covered Cascade peaks, massive rock bluffs, forested lower mountains, turquoise lakes and rivers and great hardwood groves sprinkled alongside the road.
Although we really did not cover more than about 60 miles today, it took about 6 hours because we pulled out just about everywhere possible to gaze at the glorious surroundings. We did make a short stop in Concrete to replenish our food stocks. Peggy spotted a woman here that was particularly striking due to her complete lack of teeth.
We could happily drive into the Park once a week until it becomes boring which I doubt would ever happen. I am challenged to come up with adequate superlatives to describe the scenery along this beautiful drive.
Some of the scenery was captured by our lens today and you can see a sampling if you click here

It was a travel day today so we put all our inside stuff away, disconnected all our outside stuff and hooked the Barbarian Invader to Charlotte before pulling away from our spot in the Mount Vernon Thousand Trails Preserve. Since this preserve does not have full hookups, we got to stop by the dump station on the way out to empty our waste tanks. Soon we were on our way. We drove about a quarter mile to I-5, turned south and headed for the Thousand Trails Preserve entitled Grandy Creek which is near the rustic town of Concrete.
Concrete probably should have been called “Cement” because it came into being due to the building of the Washington Portland Cement Company here. It is located at the junction of the Baker and Skagit Rivers in Skagit County. The earliest settlement (1890) here was called Minnehaha for some reason but after a post office was built, they changed the name to Baker. Then, in 1905, the cement plant was built across the river from Baker and it was called Cement City. In 1908, Cement City and Baker merged and became Concrete. I don’t know if they make any concrete here but the cement silos of Portland Superior Cement still stand with the words “Welcome to Concrete” in faded paint on the side.
As you leave Highway 20 and drive into town, you will drive under the Concrete High School which is built above a big box culvert spanning over the road. There is also the Henry Thompson Bridge here, named after a Scottish immigrant, settler and county commissioner who promoted its construction. According to Wikipedia, the single arch bridge was the longest single-span reinforced concrete bridge in the world but maybe only in Washington. Facts become a bit hazy here. The bridge did not get named until after Henry was squashed by a logging train in 1918. There are about 790 souls living in Concrete although it looks like it may have had a much larger population when they manufactured cement here in the past.
Despite the tiny town, the area scenery is splendid with enormous stands of cedar trees. It is also the the beginning of a magnificent road which is known as the North Cascades Highway and we will be traveling up this road alongside the beautiful Skagit River tomorrow. It goes past both Baker and Ross Lakes into the North Cascades National Park. We drove part of this road two years ago when we stayed in the same campground and noted the water, due to coming from beneath glaciers, is turquoise.
We noted an interesting issue here. Not long after we pulled into Grandy Creek Preserve and set up our trailer, a group of other campers pulled into a spot not far from ours. At first, they seemed perfectly normal. After a while, however, I noted there was something making a sound that we were not familiar with. Initially, it reminded me of something but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. When I asked Peggy to listen for the sound, she heard it and almost immediately identified it as the sound the Martians make in the movie Mars Attacks. Careful listening by me made me realize that was it. Initially, it sounded like single “Akk!” noises. Soon, we could hear “akk…akk…akk…AKK! AKK! AKK!…akk.” It continued periodically through the afternoon. I think it is one of our neighbors. I hope his head doesn’t explode when I play some Slim Whitman music.

We were extremely lazy today. We can proudly state that we did nothing productive. We did drive the truck to the family center at the campground to load up blog entries and photos but there were some children there pursuing a strategy of making the maximum possible amount of noise. They had new, irritating cartoons on the big screen TV that they didn’t watch but they did have the volume up at disco levels. I suppose they had to have the volume high so they could hear the TV while they attempted to play ping pong but mostly failed. They spent quite a bit of time retrieving the ball from under nearby furniture while yelling. After finishing our computer tasks, we split in order to get away from the obnoxious racket.

Another day of not having any responsibilities allowed us to go exploring again today. We decided to try a spin to Samish Island, a few miles west of our camping spot. On the way we passed through Bow and a dinky town called Edison which has some cafes and small restaurants that folks must like because there were plenty of prospective customers there.
We continued west until we got to Samish Island which appears to actually be a peninsula. It is a nice place with lots of second-growth timber and estates that extend right down to the water. Being from California, I am surprised each time I see where private owners here can own and fence a portion of the shoreline next to a public body of water. In my crybaby home state, the state owns the shoreline and everybody has access to all of it except the parts the Marine Corps owns at Camp Pendleton and the Navy owns at Point Loma in San Diego.
We returned back to Edison and turned north on WA-11. This road skirts Samish Bay and is very nice; it reminds us of coast roads through the redwoods although the trees aren’t nearly as those on Avenue of the Giants. There are rock bluffs along the east side of the road and dizzying precipices overlooking the Samish Bay portion of the Strait of Georgia on the west. There are very large cedar trees here.
We passed through an area called Chuckanut which is an Indian word meaning ugly condominium or big ostentatious house. Many big houses built on very steep terrain look out over the Strait. The streets here are pretty steep so not many folks can use their garages because they can’t get their cars into them.
We eventually made it to the city of Bellingham and, after only a short period of confusion about our route, continued northwest toward the Lummi Indian Reservation. The Lummi live on a very pretty peninsula that protects Bellingham Bay from the raging fury of the winter sea in the Strait. We took the perimeter road that skirts the water around the peninsula. The landscape is gorgeous but there are a bunch of folks living here on the rez that have retained everything they ever acquired in their life. They store this stuff in their front yards. Directly across from their places are million dollar views of the Bay, the Strait and the San Juan Islands on the horizon.
Just a bit offshore lies Lummi Island and you can catch a ferry there from the south end of the Lummi Nation’s peninsula. We were a bit late for this activity so we didn’t go. It looks very nice and if we return to this part of America we will give the Island a try.
We turned toward home from the Lummi Nation but stopped to get diesel before we left the rez. Diesel is much cheaper here than at spots off the rez.
We got a few photos that you can see if you click here

A clear schedule offered us an opportunity for aimless wandering today so we decided to take a spin around a nearby lake called Lake Whatcom. It is not What.com. We headed north toward the lake which is located southeast of Bellingham. We skirted the west shore of the lake for about 10 or 15 miles until we came to an area near the town of Geneva.
The state must have sold the land right down to the edge of the lake because people have purchased little slivers of land between the lake and the road. These slivers are all fenced from right down at the water line on one edge all the way around between the sliver and the highway and back to the water line on the other side. They are very tiny; I don’t think any of them are bigger than 1,000 square feet and most are smaller. They can’t build houses or even garages on the slivers but they can barbecue, set up outdoor furniture and wade out to their boats in the lake. Some of the spots have mini-sheds of about 40 square feet for some purpose other than habitation. Maybe they should call it Lake Whatzat? There is no waterfront public access to the lake and even if there was, there would be no parking. I am not sure having private ownership of public lake shoreline is a real good idea.
We drove around the north end and continued down the east side of Lake Whatcom. We finally ended up in the town of Sedro-Woolley (no kidding) which is a very nice little village with some gorgeous residential architecture. We wandered around the back streets for a while, admiring the beautiful houses until we started to see the same eagle-eyed local drivers for the second time which worried us may soon involve a long conversation with a local cop. We skedaddled and headed back to our RV spot near Bow.
All the roads we drove up the west side and down the east side of the lake pass through beautiful territory with large expanses of healthy standing timber. There are some great lake views although finding a place to stop and look is a bit problematic since there are no pullouts nor parking areas along the roads due to private ownership.
During our drive we shot some pix and you can see some of them if you click here

It was departure day at Birch Bay RV Preserve so we buttoned up our stuff, hooked Charlotte to the Barbarian Invader and pulled out of the park by 10:45 AM. We turned east to I-5 and merged onto the freeway southbound toward Bow, WA. About an hour later, we pulled off the freeway and into the Mount Vernon RV Preserve, another Thousand Trails facility. Strangely, the Mount Vernon Preserve is closer to the town of Bow than it is to the town of Mount Vernon. I can’t even speculate about why they named it as they did.
The campground has lots of nice RV spaces but only a very few have sewer hookups so we will be stopping by the dump station upon departure on the 23rd of August. There is a nice pool, playgrounds for the kiddies, big spaces and lots of vegetation between RV spots. It is quite shady for most of the day in our space, F-1. There are lots of birds here so we set up our feeder and the trough was soon lined with the little flying critters.
We had a short drive today so we were all set up in our space early in the day. We also noted on the literature provided by management that there is a Camping World where I could go to replace the wonky water pressure regulator in the Invader. We bought the wonky unit in South Dakota about a year ago but I took the receipt and the faulty regulator into the store and lined up for the service counter. The rep told me after I reached the counter that Camping World was uninterested in replacing the old unit because they figure they are off the hook after 90 days. I whined that the old regulator went screwball about 10 months ago and I merely had not had an opportunity to return it to Camping World due to logistical issues. The rep grinned at me and I trudged off to purchase a new unit.
We headed back to the trailer and I was able to get a lock on a satellite with our dish in spite of the trees and heavy brush around our campsite. The Olympics are on and we tuned in for the whole evening’s coverage. Go U.S.A!
Peggy shot some pix of our camping buddies. You can see them by clicking here

Peggy and I got up before 8:00 this morning which is pretty early for us retirees. We were taking showers, watching the news and Olympics and rustling up a breakfast when we got an incoming phone call from a number we could not identify. With a bit of apprehension, Peggy answered the call and found it was from National General Insurance Company, the carrier for the Good Sam Club’s RV insurance. She listened for a bit before handing the phone over to me.
Back in early June, 2016, we were visiting Monument Valley. It was over 100 degrees outside during the daylight hours and did not cool down very much at night. The second day we were there, the converter, which runs all things electric in our fifth wheel, sort of blew up. There was much smoke and apprehension but no fire. The failure of the converter eliminated the use of all the 110 volt stuff in our trailer like the microwave, fans, the TV and DVD player, all lighting except the on-board 12 volt lamps and, most importantly, the air conditioning.
I called and filed a claim with our insurance the night it occurred. Not a peep has been heard from the insurance company since that evening. This morning, an agent with a name like Gner or Kzap called us back and that is when Peggy handed the phone to me. I was not really prepared to be nice so when the agent started talking, I interrupted and asked if it was normal policy for National General to wait 10 weeks before responding to insureds’ claims. Gner/Kzap indicated that the claim had been lost in someone’s in box which was a poor selection of possible answers I was prepared to hear at the time. Stupidly, I then informed Gner/Kzap that National General’s treatment of policyholder claims is quite substandard and I was surprised they were still in business. I suggested their service was terrible, their adjusters were possibly mentally retarded, their recent ancestors may have been troglodytes and even relatively low premiums could not justify their miserable and rotten service. My language during these pithy descriptions of the company and its service was a bit more blunt than written here. I promptly hung up after regaling Gner/Kzap with all my observations without giving he/she/it a chance to get a word in edgewise.
Soon thereafter, Peggy brought up the fact that I should have allowed Gner/Kzap to at least tell me whether the bandit insurance company was going to cover my loss before rudely terminating the call. We called the company back and, after only about 15 minutes of waiting and entering numbers signifying what language I spoke and what department I wanted, I was connected to an actual human who told me that the company would not cover our claim so I did not feel so bad about giving Gner/Kzap both barrels during our short conversation. I do not regret even a bit of it although I wish I had been given more time to formulate an even more creative and harsh statement.
I’m not usually in the insurance company rating business but, if I were, I would give National General a grade of D minus for their service. This is the second time we have had to deal with their claims department and both times it took two months or more for them to respond. I am glad I did not need emergency road service since the same carrier also covers that aspect of our risk while travelling. We would still be broiling on the Arizona / Colorado border awaiting their tow truck.
Other than the phone fun this morning, we did the laundry. Peggy takes the lead on this task primarily because I am a pitiful clothes folder but I am good at packing the voluminous gobs of laundry into and out of the laundromat.
We had a bit of time left after our laundry fun so we took another trip around the peninsula in the Strait of Georgia where we are currently camped. We started with the same trip route we took a couple days ago. We went again to Semiahmoo Spit which divides the Strait from Drayton Harbor. The spit was bordered by wide expanses of bay bottom today because the tide was out a long way. We noted that there are no boats moored in most of Drayton Harbor because the bottom is lined with big, hull-ripping boulders that project up from the sandy bottom.
We then took another spin to Birch Bay where we cruised a few days ago. Peggy had me pull over in town for a reward which, in this case, was ice cream and a sizable chocolate and peanut butter cup that were very tasty. There are many distinctive and pretty beachfront homes there and most of them are pretty small although there are also some big McMansions above Birch Bay State Park. A quick internet search indicated that the tiny houses go for about $300,000 and up which would give them a per foot cost of about $750. We won’t be buying here although it would be nice because this part of the world is very pretty. The adjacent state park has a shady, serene campground in the cedar forest just above the beach. There are maybe 120 campsites here and some are big enough to take a fifth wheel trailer the size of ours although there are no hookups of any sort. Water is available in the campground but you will need some kind of container to take it back to your campsite. No electrical or sewer was spotted.
We ended up our day by returning to our trailer at Birch Bay TT and had a rough afternoon reading and sipping craft beer in our chaise lounges in the shade. It was brutal.
We shot a few pix along the way and you can see them if you click here

There is very little to report today. One of the issues encountered while traveling full-time in an RV is restocking the food and liquor cabinets and today was the day for us to address this onerous task.
Fortunately for us, there is both a Costco and a Trader Joe’s in Bellingham which is about 25 miles from our RV park. We got away for less than $400 today which was great. Maybe the food stocks will last for a while but I have little hope that the liquor will have the same fate.
We have a book of Washington maps called a DeLorme Gazetteer which allowed us to travel on skinny back roads all the way to and from Bellingham so the drive was quite pleasant. I can tell you for a fact that there are a couple refineries, a power plant and the Lummi Nation reservation on these back roads. The Lummi Nation also has cheap diesel so we filled up on the way through for about fifty cents less per gallon than you would pay off the rez.