2017 FL-WA: Summer Road Trip North

A wedding, a honeymoon, and two hurricanes!

A wedding, a honeymoon, and two hurricanes!

karenstark

The highlight of our summer, was the wedding of our youngest daughter, Shannon, to her longtime sweetheart Cameron.  The event was Saturday evening, September 9, in Spokane Washington.  The entire week prior we sat glued to the weather channel, watching hurricane Irma.  It was headed for Florida.  Holy *#@&! We finally decided that Kenny better fly to Sarasota to secure things as best he could and fly back in time for the wedding.  He flew out of Seattle on Wednesday.  And we kept watching the weather.  We’ve never prepared for a hurricane before!  He bought all kinds of ropes for the boat, and discussed  with our lifelong Sarasota resident and friend Wayne, how Island Girl should be secured.  He striped all of the canvas off of her, and cleaned everything out of her.  At home, he boxed up everything that he could get off the floor in case of flooding, and piled it up on the kitchen counters in plastic tote boxes.  He took the hard-drives out of the computers, gathered up all kinds of important documents like insurance papers, vehicle titles, etc., and he grabbed jewelry and my mom’s Bible for me – all to bring back to Washington with him.  He put a bunch of paperwork in the dishwasher to stay put and stay dry.  The hurricane was forecasted to hit our area on Sunday night.  Read more →

Glaciers and a Red Bus

Glaciers and a Red Bus

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After Shannon’s bachelorette party/bridal shower, we took a few days to head east a bit to explore Glacier National Park in Montana.  Neither of us had been there (at least as adults), so we figured this was a great time to go!  Our friend Kimbob, (who we met on our Bahamas boating adventure), used to drive a Red Bus at the park, and he highly recommended a visit while we were north for the summer.

As we approached the exit to go north in Montana from I-90, there was a lot of smoke!

There have been so many forest fires this year, but when I checked the status at the park, there were no closures or fires that would affect our visit to the park. Our original plans were to drive from Glacier up into Canada to Banff National Park, then west all the way to Whistler, than back down to Washington.  But Canada had so many fires burning, we decided to only go to Glacier then head back west.

 

On our way north, we found Flathead Lake. This is just a tiny piece of it.  It is a large lake in Montana, south of Kallispell at the base of the mountains. Read more →

More FUN with family and friends!

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You remember that Kenny is a drag-racing fan?  So are our boys.  So the first weekend of August, we went to the Northwest NHRA National Drag Races at Pacific Raceways.  Here is our gang cooperating with my selfie fun.  We had such a fun day with our kids!

As we were leaving after the races, we spotted Erica Enders with her car.  She is a pro-stock race car driver, and she was kind enough to pose with each of our boys for a picture.  There was a Disney film made about Read more →

Buttes and Mountains

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One adventure that we both had been looking forward to was to visit Kenny’s cousin Carla and her husband Joe, at their vacation home at Black Butte Ranch, in Sisters Oregon.  Add another state to our story!  They’ve had their place there since 2010, but for one reason or another, we’ve never been there.  So we set a date several months ago, and it was finally time!

The Columbia River is the state boundary between Washington and Oregon.  I couldn’t get a shot of the river through all the bridge rails and cars…. but I did get the Welcome to Oregon sign… well, maybe we weren’t really welcome? – just Entering.

AAAAAGHHH!  Portland traffic is as bad as Seattle!  They have many multi-layer bridges that cross various rivers, and Read more →

We lived to tell about it-barely!

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One thing that I was really looking forward to seeing on this trip ‘home’ was Mount Rainier, the Cascades, and the Olympic Mountain ranges.  Living in Florida now, I do miss the mountains!  Having lived around them all my life, I longed to go on some hikes to smell the alpine scents, to breathe the crisp clean air, to see big waterfalls, crystal clear rivers, alpine lakes and meadows, glaciers, and to get up close to these majestic mountains!  So we teamed up with our youngest son Brian, who has been hiking nearly every weekend this summer.  Big mistake.  He is in shape.  We are not.   He is young (late 20’s).  We are not.  But he did let me pick the hike.  Some friends (also younger than us) had just hiked to Comet falls, and said it was uphill both ways, but beautiful.  So hold on tight… here we go!  Brian told us that parking gets full early, so we headed out about 7:00 and arrived at the park entrance around 9:00, I think.

Comet Falls was MY destination selection.  Brian said there was a really cool viewpoint “just beyond the falls”.  I didn’t realize until we got there that he was talking about Read more →

Oh! Canada!

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Our next destination in the Canadian Gulf Islands is Pirates Cove Marine Park!  Yahoo!  That sounds like my kind of place!  This little cove is all set up for boaters to stay put with the tidal flow.  You go in and set anchor, then run a stern line to shore, where there are chains secured into the rock.  That keeps everybody bow out and not swinging with the wind or tide!

Rick & Rocky and Doug & Kim’s boats are the two in the middle that set bow anchors, and ran out stern lines.  Vern & Chere and Coco & Kathy’s boats saddled up to the sides and just rafted up to the two center boats.  I like to call this Read more →

Boats, Crab, and Customs

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As mentioned before, our trip across country was scheduled out such that we would arrive in La Conner, WA on June 30 so that we could hop on our friend’s boat for a 2 week trip to Canada.  We met Rick and Rocky at their boat, Ms D’Rocks, loaded up all of our stuff, and departed La Conner for Cornet Bay.  It is a state park near Deception Pass, and within the fishing area that would open for Dungeness Crab season on July 1.  We spent two nights at Cornet Bay with three other friends boats, and enjoyed as much crab as we cared to eat!  (We call ourselves the Red Neck Yacht Club.)  The guys went out in small boats to drop and pull crab pots.  Kenny & I didn’t get WA state fishing licenses, so we stayed at the big boats, which were docked up on a floating dock with only dinghy access to shore.  The guys would bring back crab and cook it up in big propane cookers right on the dock.  Then we’d crack and eat crab until we were bursting at the seams.  So GOOD!!

This is the Deception Pass bridge.  It crosses a very narrow channel that can ebb or flow more than 8 knots at tide change, so transit timing for a 7 knot trawler Read more →

Presidents and squiggly scenic drives

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We spent a full day discovering why motorcyclists love coming to this area.  Around Rapid City is Mt Rushmore, the Black Hills, and the towns Sturgis, Deadwood, and Spearfish.  There are so many scenic drives, and they are all squiggly roads, up hills, down canyons, through tunnels, and all the kinds that motorcyclists love.  First stop was Mt Rushmore National Monument.  It was sooooo impressive to see in person!

I loved reading the history about how this massive project was accomplished, and Read more →