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.

Winter 2013-2014 in Apache Junction

Oct 2013 through April 2014

After 15,000 miles 21 states and 5 Canadian Provinces we arrived in our winter home in Apache Junction, AZ.  It was a much warmer winter this year compared to last year. through Peggy’s Mom flew down and spent the entire winter and stayed in our brand New 5^th wheel as we resided in our Park Model. Enjoyed time by the pool, park parties, geocaching adventures and events. Randy had some health issues and had to have a Carotid Endocardia done just about 2 weeks before we left for the summer.

We hit the road on April 8^th with mother in law in tow as we are taking her back home to Yakima area along with Coee her cute little Shitzu. Our first stop was Las Vegas where we spent 2 days, left there $600 richer.

We decided to follow the Extraterrestrial Highway to pick up some alien geocaches and yes we stopped in Rachel NV near Area 51 and the Little Al’e’inn on our way to Tonopah, NV where we spent one night in a dirt parking lot with several other RV’s. There is a lack of RV parks in this little town or at least ones I would want to stay at. We had dinner and gambled a bit in a small restaurant next to our boondocking space for the night. Decided I would donate to the local economy and lost about $150.00. 

Next morning we drove on to Reno, NV where we stayed at a nice KOA campground about 6 miles from downtown. We went into town after we setup and it just happened to be the Reno Marathon so we watched a few people cross the finish line and then in to eat and donate some more to the economy.

We took off from Reno and went up through Susanville, CA up through Klamath Falls, OR then onto La Pine Oregon where we spent the night. Next morning we hit the road and actually drove the rest of the way to Cowiche, WA to my mother-in-law's place. Nice that she has full hookups. We spent 3 weeks at her place so we could clean, organize and get her place ready for sale and as it turns out she had an offer on her place just 2 days before Peggy and I left to start our 2014 summer time journey to Alaska.