Finally on the Road to Alaska

We left Washington State Saturday June 7th after spending about 10 days visiting friends and family.  We headed north to the Sumas WA border crossing.  Our destination for the first night was Kamloops BC...about 250 miles.  The first part of this drive was familiar to us.  We had traveled to the Hope BC in 2011 before we retired.  the Hope area is also where we started geocaching in 2011.

We stopped at the visitor center in Hope to pick up some brochures on British Columbia.  It's nice little visitor center and museum.  We logged a geocache while there.  They have it inside the center...you just ask for it.  We received a Hope BC pennant for finding the cache.

The scenery in the Hope BC area is stunning.  I'm going to put a link to the right of the blog that shows the pictures and activities from our previous trip.

On the drive to Kamloops BC there are mountains everywhere. We spent the night at an RV park next to a wildlife center.  We didn't take the tour, but we did find a couple of geocaches within walking distance and the weather was nice enough to sit outside with a drink.

Curlew Lake State Park - Republic WA

Our first stop after we left the Yakima area was Curlew Lake State park where we spent 7 nights. The state park is north of Republic WA in north central Washington.  It was a beautiful drive through the northern hills. We could definitely tell we were back in Washington as we had several thunderstorms and downpours at the Lake. 

We drove 60 miles one day to Oroville, WA so we could play “Cow Pasture Pool “.  The drive to Oroville took us through Tonasket WA.   We came across the U. S. Armed Forces Legacy Project on Hwy 97 in the town of Tonasket.  The brochure calls it " A tribute to America's past, present and future veterans nationwide."  In addition to the outdoor displays, there is a building with a service office for veterans and their families and a military library for all to use.  For more info go to www.veteranlegacyproject.org   Randy has a friend that used to live there and we wanted to find out if he still did.   We found his name on the wall outside, but we were unable to locate him.  There were also paintings on the back of each section of wall.  It was just a small area but it was interesting.  

In town of Republic, which is about 6 miles from the State Park, is the Stonerose Interpretive Center.  Stonerose is the name of the fossil site where impressions of plants, insects and fish can be found.  The city of Republic is on part of an ancient lake bed.  You can see examples of local fossils at the interpretive center.   

For an admission prices of $5-$10 you can go to the site and look for fossils.  We paid $5.00 apiece (Senior rates) and $5.00 for tools and went to the archeology site to look for fossils.  Surprisingly the site is just a couple of blocks from the center and right in town.  The city periodically uses a front end loader to bring more of the rocks down.   

 We found and brought back 6 specimens from the site. The kid at the interpretive center was very smart and helped us catalog the finds The fossils we found we from the Ecocene Era about 50 million years old. We found a couple of different Leaves, a small wasp and the wing from a small insect. This was a pretty cool way to spend the day and learn a little about fossils and geology.