A window inside the shower at Diane's. I've just been wandering around looking at stuff here and reading forums online. Still grey but no rain today. The weatherman said it would be sunny this afternoon, heh!

Diane built this glass house in the backyard as a workshop for Betsy so she could work on her projects even when it is raining.

We're barbequing some of the salmon Mimi caught tonight. Mimi just went to pick CLee up as Tucci is working. We leave tomorrow.

Old friends Tucci and CLee came over for dinner tonight. Diane made some really good chicken fried steak and I made piña coladas. Lot of fun.

It has taken me less than 24 hours to remember my love hate relationship with the Pacific Northwest. Rain one day is nice, rain for two is now old. Rain rain go away......

We are here at our friends Diane and Betsy's house in Seattle. They are incredible artists and this place has beautiful surprises in every nook and cranny. We're parked in their driveway with cable internet and electricity and - of course, since it is Seattle - it is raining.

After Tofino we decided to return to the US, it's really crowded here and we're tired of trying to find a spot to camp or even to pull over and explore. We drove back to Victoria and spent the night at the ferry terminal waiting for the 6am ferry. It was a gorgeous spot, right across from the Empress Hotel.

We made it into Canada without a problem, barely asked us anything and waved us through. We've spent a couple nights in Provincial parks, they are really gorgeous. The problem for me is that most of them are up under this incredible forest, huge trees and beautiful ferns and moss but not my idea of a place to stay. The first morning, I kept waking up thinking it was dawn because of the dim grey light. I finally couldn't sleep anymore and got up only to find out it was after 9am. The combination of the trees and the tinted windows of the LD meant I had to have the lights on to make coffee. Pretty gloomy, definitely not my cup of tea. The second night I told the ranger we wanted a site out from under the trees and we got into an open parking lot next to the beach. Much better, we had sunshine in the morning and a place to walk the dogs and we were quite close to the beach. I don't know how people live in these forests, I see houses up under them - my new joke is if someone tells you to put it where the sun don't shine, I know just the place.


Yesterday we took the road towards the west coast, we'd been along the inland coast. It was not a good road as they are working on it and it goes up and over the coastal range, but the scenery was beautiful with lakes and rivers and craggy peaks. We arrived at the end of the road to find a small tourist town on a point. Very picturesque and very crowded, apparently Canadian schools open in 2 weeks and everyone is getting in a last vacation. Mimi found a kind of gravel quarry in town, small road in and walls of granite all around. We left the rig there and went out to dinner on the waterfront. The food was so-so but we had a wonderful waiter, a gay tribal member who lives across the bay on an island reserve. He spends the winters wherever he wants, last year in Hawaii, and we discussed his choices for next year. Perhaps San Francisco... perhaps Key West. He was a lot of fun. The hostess told us she spent last winter on Isla Mujeres in the Yucatan.

I spotted a high-speed internet sign last night on a coffee shop and we are here now. They don't have wireless but I am picking up a weak signal from somewhere around here. That's good as they charge $5 an hour for internet and I'm on for free. It's sunny and warm, we're sitting outside on the patio in the sun.

Time to go...

We left Sekiu this afternoon and drove 50 miles to Port Angeles. We're going to take the ferry tomorrow to Vancouver Island. We had intended to spend the night at the WalMart but spotted a great pit barbeque place along the road, stopped for food and they told us we could stay here for the night. It's level and off the road with a huge field for the dogs. As we were eating our take out barbeque (which was delicious) the owner came over with a huge bag of barbecued chicken, they were closing and didn't want to throw it out. Pretty nice folks around here. The checker at Safeway went and found us a ferry schedule and even wrote the phone number on it for us. Let's hope our luck holds tomorrow with the Canadian border guards.

Salmon in the smoker. We've been fishing here in Sekiu for the last week. Mimi caught about a dozen salmon, we've smoked and canned some and frozen the rest.


Heading out in the boat at dawn.



We took a short drive up to Cape Flattery, the farthest north-west point in the continental US. It's gorgeous, cold and beautiful.

A new format

I've decided to switch to a blog to record our travels. It became a big hassle to keep the mailing list updated and get the email journals out. I hope that this allows us to add impressions more often and let our readers check in whenever they want. Let me know how this is working for you.