June 2011--We were living in our Cardinal 5th wheel in Austin waiting for our house to sell. Austin experienced one of its hottest and driest summers that year, with over 100 days over 100 degrees. The A/C rarely stopped running, and was often unable to reduce the inside temperature below 85 degrees. That was hot!!
June 2012--We were making our way through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio in our brand new motorhome. Everywhere we were, heat records were being broken with temps in the 90's and 100's. Our new rig was better able to maintain a comfortable inside temperature, but only with the A/C units running almost non-stop--sound familiar? We were beginning to believe that we were jinxed somehow.
June 2013--We began the month of June near Portland, Oregon in our now 1-year-old motorhome, and continued moving north through Washington until we were less than 15 miles from the Canadian border. The number of days we had to run our A/C can be counted on very few fingers; in fact, we had to run our heat pumps most mornings to get the chill out of the rig. Daytime highs were in the 60's and 70's, nights were in the 40's and 50's. We felt like we were in a dream. We're putting it down in our record books. Now on to what we did and saw while in this dream.
When we think of Seattle, the images that come to mind is the Space Needle, Starbucks coffee, flying fish at the Pike Place Market, and Microsoft. The first three made our 'to see' list; HeM's disdain for Microsoft kept it off the list (but we did drive past the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation building, and saw a small amphitheater that was donated by them).
The Space Needle was the first stop.
As we were riding up the elevator to the viewing platform, the operator/docent mentioned several facts regarding the Space Needle's height, construction, etc. HeM can tell you all about that. All that SheM remembers is that the operator made a general arm gesture in the direction of Lake Union and Lake Washington, and mentioned that "there are the houseboats where Sleepless in Seattle was filmed". That's one of SheM's favorite movies. She never did see the houseboats, but not for lack of trying, craning her neck and scanning the lakes anytime we passed by them. You'll have to use your imagination as she did to spot them in this picture.
We visited the Pike Place Market. Maybe SheM is just getting old (and she is!), but she found the market to be just very crowded and full of the same kind of miscellaneous 'stuff' that is found in every other flea market setting across the country. That is, except, for the bakery where we found some wonderful country bread baguettes. And it wasn't sourdough--we've burned out on sourdough since that's all we've been served in almost every restaurant we've frequented in the last 2-3 months.
The famous flying fish market was a must-see. Of course, it was everyone else's 'must see', so there was a constant crowd around it. We thought about having a fish thrown for us, but found a salmon at a better price at a competing fish market so we chose economics over theatrics.
The first Starbucks establishment is in Pike Place Market. We stood in line for 15-20 minutes for our remembrance latte and espresso (SheM and HeM, respectively). Oddly, it tasted just like any other Starbucks.
So just how much coffee can a community consume? We're all familiar with "a Starbucks on every corner", but here in the Pacific Northwest, it's really the case that there are local coffee stands/shops EVERYWHERE. And they seem to stay busy all day. Another note of interest is that the ethnicity of the restaurants seem to be mostly Asian (no surprise) and Mexican (surprise). We don't know exactly what we were expecting, but we didn't think we'd see so many Mexican restaurants this close to the 'other' border.
Our last outing in Seattle was to a sculpture garden not far from the Space Needle. It was for the most part a disappointment. We saw only a few sculptures, but there was one that took up a lot of the space anyway.
The furthest north we parked Roamin (we've named our RV--is that normal?) was less than 15 miles from the Canadian border in the small town of Ferndale. The flowers are gorgeous up this way.
We used Ferndale as our base to visit the San Juan Islands and Canada. We took our car on a ferry over to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.
We drove the perimeter of the island, making our first stop at Lime Kiln Point Park, aka Whale Watch Park.
Unfortunately, the whales were nowhere to be seen that day. We drove on to a sculpture park (yes, we decided to try another one) on the northern end of the island, near Roche Harbor. This truly is a sculpture park, with over 100 sculptures spread over 19 acres.
Next stop was a winery, of course. How long has it been since we've been to a winery? Too dang long! San Juan Vineyards is in a picturesque setting of an old schoolhouse and garden. The wine is not California-quality, but then few are (in our humble opinions).
We could not have asked for a better day weather-wise. Clear skies and temps in the 70's. That perfect weather was not to last. Finally, the wet northwestern weather we had expected caught up to us.
And it rained for the better part of the week we were there. We did venture north of the border into Vancouver for a day. We visited the Museum of Anthropology and was impressed by the displays of totem poles and other large wood carvings.
When lunchtime arrived, we looked for a local restaurant. Again, we were surprised to see as many Mexican restaurants as we did. We figured that as long as we're across the border, we should have border cuisine, so Mexican it was.
After lunch we drove out to Capilano Suspension Bridge Park in North Vancouver. There has been a suspension bridge across the Capilano River since 1889 which loggers used to get to and from their homes. The bridge spans 450 feet. It has, of course, been improved since those days and is now a major tourist attraction.
Walking through the rain forest park was really nice, and crossing the bridge was not as scary for SheM as she thought it would be even though it did bounce and sway quite a bit.
We had fully intended on making a visit to Victoria while here, but weather and logistics didn't work in our favor. We'll keep this on our 'to see' list for another time. Our last outing was to take a scenic drive south of Ferndale called Chuckanut Drive. It follows the shoreline and offers nice views over the water. We headed to La Conner which is a small town featuring local artist works, and we found a nice wall hanging to add to Roamin's décor.
We've said goodbye to the Pacific Northwest, and are headed to Spokane. We look at the weather forecasts with record heat making its way to eastern Washington--temps over 100--and see that we are heading right into it. This will be a very rude awakening from our record cool, dreamy June.
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