August 8 6th day on the road

We started out with breakfast at McDonald's.  This one was special since it is in Leavenworth and therefore had to look German.  Judge for yourself.

We drove Highway 97 south back to Interstate 90 for a two hour drive to Kent, Wa.  The KOA for Seattle is here, just south of the city.

On Highway 97 we crossed through the Blewitt Pass with an elevation of 4102 feet.  On Interstate 90 we crossed the Snoqualmie Pass at an elevation of 3022 feet.  Temperature here was only 13C and we had fog in the pass.

This was a very short driving day and gave us a chance to do some laundry and to pick up the wine for the cruise - and my brother-in-law's natural peanut butter, now immortalized in this blog!! 

The weather on this side of the mountains is decidedly cooler and we have on long pants and sweatshirts.  It would be great sleeping weather if we weren't camped almost on the street.  This is a small KOA and right on a main road, although thankfully not a highway.  We have been promised that traffic slows down at night.  I will keep you posted.

Plan for tomorrow - take the bus into Seattle proper and visit the sights. 

August 7 fifth day on the road

It was a restless night in the Spokane Valley KOA.  A freight train came roaring past the campground every couple of hours.  We got up early!!!  So did everyone else.

This was a short driving day since we only had to do 310 km to Leavenworth, Washington.  We checked in at the KOA there and walked into town, about 1.5 miles.  Leavenworth was an old logging town that was broke when the logging industry when flat.  The town remade itself as a Bavarian Village and markets that summer and winter.  We ate Jaegerschnitzel, spaetzle and red cabbage at King Ludwig's and walked the main street.

The drive from the Spokane Valley to Leavenworth was quite nice.  We got off the Interstate and drove Highway 2 through a high plain.  The wheat was just being harvested and looks good.  I knew Washington was famous for apples but did not know that so much wheat was grown here.

Temps are still hot - 30C and it looks like another clear night.  Tomorrow we drive to the wet part of the state - Seattle.

August 6 fourth day on the road

We started out at 6 am this morning and the temperature was 16C.  By the time we stopped for the night we had gone as high as 33C, at fairly high elevations.  We drove 930 Kilometers today.  Yesterday's distance was about 790 Kilometers.

Just a housekeeping note.  You will see miles and kilometers, and celsius and fahrenheit.  I am posting the information in whatever system I obtain it.  For example, the car runs in kilometers but my road maps and the road signs are all in miles.  Most of my temps are from the car readout which is currently set to celsius. 

We had oatmeal at McDonalds for breakfast. It was quite good and loaded with fruit and nuts and certainly much better for you than an egg mcmuffin.  I can't remember if I mentioned this or not but we are not cooking on our way out to Seattle.  We eat breakfast at McDonald's, lunch is a veggie sub from Subway and supper is salad and whatever strikes our fancy, usually purchased somewhere along the way at a WalMart superstore.  We will cook our own meals on our trip back home.

There was certainly much evidence of random brush fires on our drive today.  And, there were salt deposits in many of the small ponds that were dried up.  A sign of the times, dry times, are the signs warning drivers not to throw cigarette butts out the window and also asking drivers not to pull on the grass when they pull on the road shoulder.  It is so dry that the heat from the exhaust could set the grass on firel

We saw our first "chain up" area today - a pull off so that you can stop and add chains to your tires for winter driving.  Don't think this will be a problem for us since the temperature was 28C at the first chain up area!!

At 10:59 this morning we crossed the continental divide at an elevation of 6393 feet.

Today was a long driving day but we are back on track to reach Seattle on time.  We gained an hour because we are on Pacific Time.  Here is a shot of our camp site in Spokane. The weather so far has held out for us and we have not had to set up the car for sleeping, always a bonus.

August 5 third day on the road

We didn't start out until 8 am this morning.  The morning temperature was 18C.  The day warmed up quickly, however and at 6 pm it was still 36C.

Our plan for today was to revisit Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota.  We first saw it in 1992 and it was a drug store and other vendors pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  Of course, that has changed and hotels and gas stations have sprung up around the drug store and around Wall.  Nostalgia - so much better when not revisited!!

There were lots of motorcycles in Wall and most were headed to Sturgis.  We passed by Sturgis on Interstate 90 and there were bikes and RVs everywhere. 

Our second stop for today was Devil's Tower in Wyoming.  Again, the motorcycles dominated.  There is a KOA just at the entrance to the National Monument and you couldn't park any more motorcycles there if you tried.

All of South Dakota was very dry, as is Wyoming.  We are stopped in Hardin, Montana for the night and will drive about 550 miles through the state.  So far, the only green we are seeing is the sugar beet fields because they are irrigated.

We have done this drive west (or east) a couple of time nows.  Especially when we drive west I can't help but think about the early settlers in their covered wagons and how they must have felt when they saw the mountains beginning to loom in the distance.  We saw the Bighorn Mountains today, always to the west of us (Interstate 90 curves north at that point).  The highest peak is about 11,000 feet.  Imagine trying to find a pass through those mountains.  Even with the extreme heat we have had there are still snow patches at some of the peaks!!

It will be another warm night.  Tomorrow we should be around Missoula Montana in the mountains and hopefully it will cool off a little there.

As of yet there are no extra pictures posted on my link above.  I am having problems downloading my pictures to Flickr.  I may take a couple of tries before something shows up there.  Sorry about that.

August 4 second day on the road

We got a 7 am start today.  It was cloudy and cool, only 24C and we did run into rain today but no storms.  They were south and west of us.  Some people here at the campground that have come in from Missouri did run into some heavy storms. 

We were on Interstate 80 for the first part of the day today.  When we took the cutoff of 680 to reach Interstate 29 north, we stopped at a scenic outlook.  We climbed the fire tower but the winds were so strong we didn't go all the way up.  Not only were the winds strong, but they were cold.  Temperature dropped to about 16C for a time. 

Once we got to South Dakota and Interstate 90 the temperature started to climb again and we made it to 34C.  The winds did not die down and it was hard to put up the tent tonight.  Forecast for tonight is mid 50s F!!  Warm pajama time for sure.

Interstate 29 is part of the Lewis and Clark trail.  We have already driven I29 farther north on previous journies to Winnipeg!!

The state motto of South Dakota is "Great Faces Great Places" and has a picture of the Mount Rushmore faces.  Neat.  We actually thought about going to Mount Rushmore again just to see what has changed but we won't - I found out where all the motorcycles are going.  Sturgis , SD.  They expect about 500,000 bikes there next week.  And guess where Sturgis is - Black Hills, near Mount Rushmore.

We did revisit Mitchell, South Dakota and the Corn Palace.  I will post some picutres tomorrow.  This is a basketball arena that is decorated on the outside with only parts of the corn plant.  The pictures they make change every year except in years of drought. They haven't decided yet if they will change for next year.

There is a drought here.  We have seen some terrible looking corn, very dry meadows.  Some corn has been harvested already because it was in such poor shape.  We also saw fields of sunflowers along Interstate 90 but they, too, look small.  They are both shorter and the heads are much smaller than normal.

So, we will prepare for a cool night. The sky is clear and the sun is shining.  It is 6:30 pm Mountain time.  We decided that going west we were getting younger by the day.  Unfortunately, coming home we will age again.

August 3 First day on the road

I am a day behind in my posting since last night's KOA did not have a strong wifi signal and we also drove much longer than expected.  I will try to catch up today and then stay caught up!!

We got an early start this morning but ran into traffic at the bridge so we didn't cross into Michigan until 6 am.  Traffic was light.  We stopped in Marshall Michigan at the Denny's.  When we first visited here in 2006, it was decked out as a Route 66 diner.  This morning it just looked like a diner.  Sometimes you don't get repeats.

While the traffic was light, the weather was hot.  At 10:30 am it was 31C and by 1 pm it was 34C.  It would climb all the way to 38C.  It did cool off overnight.  We set up the tent but didn't clear the car for sleeping since it really didn't feel like rain.  There was a line of strong storms but they were moving more south and east from our location.  We ended up in Adel, IA.  The campground was full of RVs but there was a little room left for tents.  Twelve hours on the road was a little long today but we were very good and made several stops for naps and water.

The rivers we crossed, including the Mississippi, are very low.  Some of the smaller ones are almost dry.

Today's kilometer total was 1030km from home to Adel with no sidetrips.

We have been seeing, actually being passed by, many, many motorcycles.  will have to try and find out where they are going. For some reason, when we do a road trip, we always run into a lot of motorcycles.  I'll let you know where they are going once I find out.

with apologies to John Denver and Peter, Paul and Mary

All our bags are packed
We're ready to go
Car is waiting.......

Time to get this show on the road.  All the luggage and camping gear have been stowed and we are good to go.  We ended up taking out the back seats on the van so that we have that area to stow some of the camping boxes and the suitcases.  The suitcases won't have to be moved until we get to the dock in Seattle.

I've done a final check of the weather and while it can always change and will, it looks to be fairly good for our chosen route.  The weather in Alaska, however, has not been too great.  There is a couple on the cruise right now who are also posting to the Roll Call for the Amsterdam and it has been cool and cloudy.  Temps have been running only in the mid 50s F.  We have rain jackets and sweaters packed.  It will be quite a change from our weather here in the midwest.

Just a housekeeping note: several people reading my blog have mentioned that they tried to leave a comment but had to create a login to do that.  If you have my email address, just send any comments to me there rather than creating a login for yourself.   I will be picking up my emails when I write my posts, hopefully on a daily basis.

So, a good night's sleep, cereal with the last of the milk tomorrow morning, empty the garbage, lock the doors and off we go.

See you on the road!!