This is about:  Hantaviruses – they are single-stranded, enveloped, negative sense RNA viruses in the Bunyaviridae family which can kill humans. We discovered that the mouse we trapped (and blogged about) was a Deer Mouse and that some deer mice carry the Hanavarius.

All of you Californians might remember: August of 2012 in Yosemite National Park: Three people died after contracting hantavirus during their stay in tent cabins at Yosemite National Park’s Curry Village. The cabins were sanitized to minimize the risk of contracting the rodent-borne disease, but it’s absolutely impossible to eliminate all risk.

Albert and I did what anyone would have done after finding a mouse in our home – set a trap, dispose of the body and clean up.

Oh what a mess it was. There was feces under the sink, on top of the sink, under the couch, in the closet, you name it – that mouse had been everywhere. So we started to clean up. We swept and wiped and vacuumed in places we couldn’t reach by hand. We washed all the dishes in the cabinets and wiped out drawers until we couldn’t see any more waste from this mouse. By the end of the day we were exhausted and sat down to see what we could do to keep mice from entering our RV in the future. As we were researching mice in camping places we ran across an article about Hantavirus and deer mice. We quickly went back to the dump area where Albert had disposed of the mouse and to our shock saw that it was a dear mouse as described in this article. We looked at each other and said in disbelief, “no, are you sure, is it really, did it carry this deadly virus?” The story then got worse, it said that whatever you do, DO NOT vacuum or disturb the area because that is how the virus is spread.  My mind flashed back to seeing Albert with the vacuum cleaner under the couch and under the sink area cleaning just minutes ago. Oh My God what have we done!

I started to cry and tremble to think that we might have congested this virus. We read, I think, almost every article on the web about this horrible, deadly virus. We held each other in our arms and tried to convince ourselves that we couldn’t have contracted this virus, that this mouse wasn’t infected with this virus – he couldn’t have been, right?

We tried to get some sleep that night but it was on our minds. Then, no more than a couple of days later, I started to feel sick, I felt that I was coming down with a sinus cold —- but was it? Later that day I asked Albert to take me to a doctor so I could get confirmation that it was just a cold. We drove to the little town down the road from the RV Park, but they couldn’t admit me and we were sent to another town further down the road. We finally arrived at a little hospital about an hour from where we were camped. I don’t know who was more scared, me or Albert thinking that I might have the Hantavirus. The doctor examined me and told me that It was just a cold or sinuses like I had expected. Than we told him the story about our mouse. He suddenly changed his demeanor and started telling us about the hantavirus and how there was no cure and advised us to stay close to a facility where they can administer help to us if we start showing any sign of the virus.

He then handed us two N-95 face masks and a pamphlet on what symptoms to watch for and how to properly clean up after this mouse. He also said that this virus is not transferred from human to human, so any contact with people would be safe. He said that the virus has an incubation time of 2 to 5weeks, although we had read that there was one case where it was after 8 weeks. No blood test could tell us if we had it or not, we just had to WAIT.

And wait we did, counting every day and sometimes every moment. Making sure we took care of ourselves, eating right and getting enough sleep. There wasn’t much else we could do but wait. We tried to get back to being excited about our trip but there was always this sword in our backs letting us know that it was still possiblely there. This is the real reason we abandoned any plans of going to Alaska. Instead, we stayed in Washington close to a hospital as suggested by the Doctor. We stayed for the duration of 6 weeks ( one week more than the “official” incubation period) and then decided to move on to Montana. Finally, the 8 weeks came and we celebrated it with joy!

I am today writing this blog because I don’t want anyone to ever have this experience. The odds are that you will never come across a dear mouse that is infected with this virus but you just don’t know. ALL OF THIS would have been ellimated just with proper cleaning. Click the link below to read an article that was given to us by people from the Hantavirus Hotline on how to properly clean after ANY RODENT…………. Please read and stay informed…

Hantavirus Clean Up

We are now prepared – We carry the proper cleaning supplies and two N-100 (HEPA) face-masks (one step up from the N-95 masks we received from the doctor) for any further encounter of rodents. We also have purchased Fresh Cab and have spread that around the various nooks and crannies in motorhome … so far, it has kept them out.

Please be informed…. do some research on your own. There is a Hantavirus hot-line which we called many of times with questions and they were very nice and helpful. Call them if you have any questions:

Hantavirus Hotline
(877) 232-3322
(404) 639-1510

Added Information about the Virus:

HANTAVIRUS IS A STRANGE little zoonotic beast. Zoonosis is the movement of a pathogen from an animal to a human. David Quammen describes it in his recent book, Spillover, as “a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the 21st century.” Some of the most disturbing viruses to emerge in the past 30 years have been zoonotic: Ebola, Hendra virus, HIV, SARS, West Nile. Even as we wipe out more species, humans are coming into closer contact with other animals and inviting their viruses into our world, into our blood.

Hantavirus hit the American radar in 1993. That spring, a healthy young Navajo man and his fiancée died suddenly in the Four Corners area, where the borders of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet. Both had suffered acute respiratory failure, which means that they couldn’t breathe. An Indian Health Service doctor, going over death records, discovered five similarly healthy young people who’d all died under similar circumstances. Over the next few weeks, more patients turned up with the same symptoms. Because many victims were Navajo or came from the reservation region, the media initially dubbed it the Navajo flu.

According to Mark Smolinski, an epidemiologist who studies emerging pandemics for the Skoll Global Threats Fund, a San Francisco non-profit founded by former eBay executive Jeff Skoll, symptoms included “a simple cold, a sudden fever—then trouble breathing and an immediate downhill course.” Back in 1993, Smolinski worked on the Four Corners mystery as a young public-health official. He and his colleagues, he remembers, found a chalkboard and listed “every known possible disease, toxin, chemical, or occupational exposure.”

Finally, virologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), working with tissue samples from the victims, discovered a genetic link to hantaviruses, a family of European viruses previously unknown in North America. The European virus caused kidney failure, but the Four Corners victims died of lung failure. What emerged in the Southwest that spring was a new strain of hantavirus endemic to North America. Scientists called the strain Sin Nombre, Spanish for nameless. Thirty percent of deer mice trapped in the Four Corners area were found to be carrying the Sin Nombre strain.

Mice infected with hantavirus shed the living virus in their urine, feces, and saliva. It takes just the right combination of timing, drying, and aerosolization for humans to become infected. A mouse pees or poops, the excrement dries onto dust particles, then those particles get swept up into the air. Human infection most commonly happens in confined spaces like houses, cabins, or storage areas, but it’s got to happen within 48 hours of the mouse shedding the virus—researchers have, so far, seen hantavirus survive for only two days outside a host.

Once a human inhales the virus, it can take up to five weeks to incubate. Then the victim comes down with flu-like symptoms that can linger for days. The symptoms might actually lessen for a bit. Then, all of a sudden, things take a turn for the worse. Much worse.

“It felt like the flu for about a week, and then one night I got horribly sick,” says Ethan Lindsey, a 34-year-old public-radio producer, who contracted hantavirus during a visit to Montana from his home in Bend, Oregon, in 2009. A month later, he ran a Fourth of July 5K. Felt great. Four days after that, he came down with what felt like the flu. “I was drained, bone weary, coughing,” he says. He went to the doctor, who couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t swine flu, maybe just a mild case of pneumonia. Lindsey went home and rested, but continued to decline. “I felt horribly sick,” he says. “About midnight, my fiancée drove me to the hospital,” the St. Charles Medical Center in Bend. “I almost fainted on the way there.”

The turn from flu to respiratory failure happens so fast that one hantavirus survivor group on Facebook advises people who suspect they’ve been infected to designate a friend to monitor them around the clock. If things go south, a victim may be too sick to reach the hospital alone.

If the disease reaches that point—and it’s unclear what percentage of those infected with hantavirus actually do—it’s bad. Breathing begins to fail. Some victims describe the feeling of a band tightening around their chest or of being smothered with a pillow. “They put me on oxygen because it was becoming hard to breathe,” says Lindsey. “I remember the doctor telling me, ‘Listen, your oxygen saturation is at 60 percent and dropping fast. Once it hits 40 percent, major organs are going to fail and you’re going to die. We think we need to put you into a medically induced coma.’”

They put Lindsey under for nine days. Doctors hooked him up to a high-frequency oscillating ventilator because his lungs were filling with fluid. At one point his fever ran so high that nurses put his unconscious body in an ice bath.

Lindsey’s doctors still didn’t know it was hantavirus. “It’s so rare, why would they test me for that, right?” he says. The hantavirus test takes four to seven days. It’s extremely nuanced and difficult to interpret. There are a lot of false positives.

Even if they’d known, there wasn’t much more to be done. There is no known cure. The best that doctors can do is hook up a patient to a ventilator and let the body fight the virus on its own. The fortunate, like Lindsey, recover. But many are not fortunate.

“We had a 75 percent mortality rate in those Four Corners cases,” says Smolinski. “We wanted to know: Did this just pop up, or did something change? And were there some ecological pressures that caused it to evolve to the point where we started to recognize it?”

There were two answers. A study of autopsies in the Southwest indicated that there had been fatal cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, or HPS (as the disease associated with the Sin Nombre strain came to be called), dating back to the 1950s. At that time, doctors had attributed the deaths to respiratory distress, cause unknown. In fact, CDC investigators found that traditional Navajo medicine recognized a similar disease—and associated its occurrence with mice.

Today, researchers believe that hantavirus coevolved with North American rodents. Deer mice are the virus’ main host, though variations appear in white-footed mice, cotton rats, and rice rats as well. The rodents are considered reservoirs, which means that they harbor the virus without being affected by it.

To Smolinski’s second question, there were indeed ecological pressures. An unusually wet winter led to a bumper crop of nuts on the region’s piñon pines that spring. Flush with food, mice populations exploded. The virus hadn’t mutated. There were simply more mice about, which meant more chances for people to come in contact with the virus.

The 1993 outbreak ultimately claimed 27 lives—a mortality rate of 56 percent. That’s shockingly high. The Ebola virus, top of the scary charts, has a mortality rate of 30 to 90 percent. But there was one piece of good news: hantavirus didn’t transmit person-to-person. It moved from mouse to human, but humans seemed to be dead-end vessels. Infected patients weren’t contagious.

The hanta scare died down after 1993. But the virus didn’t go away. About 30 people come down with hantavirus in the U.S. every year. The mortality rate remains high: 37 percent of patients diagnosed with hantavirus die. It shows up all over the place, but predominantly in the West. New Mexico: 91 cases since 1993. Colorado: 78. Montana: 35. California: 48.

In most cases, the carriers of the virus turned out to be deer mice. Which is a challenge. You can’t wipe out the disease by killing all the deer mice. (The deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, prefers rural fields, forests, and outbuildings; it has nothing to do with deer, despite its name. The mice you trap in your basement are more likely house mice, Mus musculus, which aren’t known carriers.) For North American carnivores, deer mice are like nature’s wheat. They’re the food staple for birds, cats, reptiles, and canines. They grow like a crop during spring and summer, and with a certain percentage of them grows the hanta.

Be informed and be safe….

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Our followers will have read how significant delays at the DMV in processing my driver’s license has prevented us from entering Canada, where my interim license is not recognized. The delays, as we waited and waited, also caused us to abandon our travels to Alaska, the original destination of our trip.

While extremely disappointed and even frustrated, we refuse to allow these setbacks to put a damper on this amazing journey we are on. We have come to love this lifestyle of traveling, not really knowing where the next stop will be or what the next location will bring. There is a saying among the motorhome folk that states “Home is where you park it”, which is starting to ring very true to us.

So, after the delays, we enthusiastically researched destinations that lie to the East of Washington and that is where we are now heading. Frustratingly, I do still not have that driver’s license, but the interim one is fully legal in the US so we are off.

We left Anacortes, WA and headed east on Hwy 20, the most northern hwy that goes east/west. We travelled right through the North Cascades National Park, then through towns with unusual sounding names like “Twisp” and “Okanogan”. Our first stop was Omak, an unexpectedly lovely town. While seemingly in the middle of nowhere, it was awesome. The RV Park we stayed at was quite outstanding! Right next to the Okanogan river, large, spacious sites, 50 Amp hookups for the motorhome, perfectly clean and modern facilities. Right next to the RV Park was a stadium where a local barrel racing event was going on. For those not aware what barrel racing is (which until that night included myself), it is one of the events at a Rodeo. The event is for women riders, who navigate a circuit through 3 barrel drums on horseback. The winner is the rider with the fastest time.

We walked to the stadium and watched for a while, marveling at the speed and agility of these girls and their horses. I had never seen this live before and found it not only fascinating, it also felt very appropriate watching this in an area known for cowboys and cowgirls.

After Omak, we continued east-wards, determined to get into Idaho for our second stop as we were keen to leave Washington. Please realize,we mean no disrespect to Washington, it is a beautiful state, but we just wanted to get on with our adventure and felt that being in another state would make that “real”.

So we continued east on Hwy 20, through the towns of “Republic” and “Kettle Falls” to “Tiger” where we headed south to “Newport”. At Newport we crossed into Idaho. Yay! Feelings of “relief”, “excitement” and “adventure” flushed through us again. That excitement we originally felt when we departed Sacramento was back! It was a welcome feeling! To further heighten that excitement (and this may sound really strange), we decided to overnight, not at an RV Park, but in the car park of a Walmart! Yep, you read that correctly. Strange as that sounds, it is something we had not yet done with our motorhome. It meant overnighting without a hookup for water, electric or sewer, instead relying on all the capabilities of our motorhome. We were pretty confident this would not be an issue, but, as it was our first time, we had some apprehension.

We called the Walmart in advance to ask permission (we had learned this was the appropriate thing to do) and were assured we were welcome, but to please park around the perimeter of the carpark. So we did, and were ultimately joined by 9 other campers that night. Our motorhome did just fine by the way, we have a residential refrigerator which is the biggest power consumer (it is always on), but we also used the microwave, boiled water for our tea and coffee, ran the lights, water pump, water heater and heater. Our batteries held up perfectly fine, dropping to 55% by the time we left. We could have done better though as we made the mistake of not switching our water heater/heater to diesel, which would have saved some of the battery power.

What WAS a problem, was the battery of our Subaru Forester. It was as dead as a doornail when we got there

This has happened to us before, so we should not really have been surprised, but we were. Let me explain. When you tow the Forester you need to turn the key to the “ACC” position, which turns on all the electronics inside the car and that, of course, drains the battery. We estimate we can tow for about 5, maybe 6 hours. Max! That is one day of towing and the arrival at Walmart came at the end of our second day towing. Note we knew this, so ran the engine of the Subaru for quite some time at the end of the first day, then again before we headed off in the morning. Obviously, not enough.

Needless to say we were disappointed, frustrated and annoyed. Feelings that turned even stronger when our “go-to” car-starter pack completely failed! The battery was THAT dead. So, on the Walmart carpark, I started the motorhome’s onboard generator to get 120V power, then plugged in my battery charger to charge the dead battery. This of course worked just fine and we were back in business soon after. However, it was another mark against our Subaru. We learned (after we purchased the Subaru) that most other cars that can be towed, have a “Disconnect” feature, which simply disconnects the wheels from the drive train. You do not even have to “turn on” the switch as the wheels turn freely. This means the battery is not taxed at all. When we purchased the Subaru we were told “Absolutely, you can tow this vehicle behind you motorhome”, but they failed to tell us “but only for a few hours”. We live and learn I suppose.

We actually love the way the Subaru drives, we love the All Wheel Drive, we also love the comfort and “zippy” engine, but she is just not suited to be towed behind a motorhome. We will continue “as is” on this trip of course as we have little choice, but, sadly, she will be traded in for something else upon our return home. A costly exercise, but we feel we have little choice.

After leaving the car park instead of an RV Park, we set out and entered Montana soon after! Excitement hits us again and the whole Subaru “thing” was pushed out of our conscious thoughts.

We found a site at an RV Park in Columbia Falls, just 15 minutes outside of Glacier National Park.

Upon our arrival, they only had a 30Amp site available, which we took. Then moved to a 50Amp site a few days later, relieved as we have hit some unusually hot weather with temperatures hitting the mid-90s. In Montana! With the 50Amp connection we can adequately run our A/C units. You can tell we are really roughing it in this motorhome

Here is a view of the roads from inside the motorhome . . .

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We’ve been in Washington for almost 2 months now and for some reason or another, we just never got round to visiting Seattle. Until today that is.

We had a list of places to see visit, but no idea how long it would take to cover them all. We DID know we wanted to end the day at the top of the Space Needle with, hopefully, great views of the city at night. Turns out we would not be disappointed.

But let me start at the beginning. The “must see” items on the list were the Space Needle (who doesn’t want to see that when in Seattle?) and the Pike Place market. We had heard a lot about Pike Place including that it was where Starbucks originated. As a coffee nut, I had really wanted to check that out.

It was only an hour and a half from our RV Park in Bellingham to the parking garage at the Space Needle, which was our first stop.
As we walked up to the Space Needle, we spotted this amazing roof structure in the distance and went to check it out. What we saw turned out to be the roof of the EMP Museum (EMP stands for “Experience Music Project”). The EMP Museum is a nonprofit museum, dedicated to contemporary popular culture. The museum was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and has organized dozens of exhibits since then.

The roof is AMAZING! There are three distinct parts to it and each is a different color. One seems to be made of bronze plating and changes color depending on how the sun hits it. Beautiful colors that range from golden to red copper to deep purple. The shapes of each of the roofs is also amazing, like someone draped a huge blanket over an irregular shape. A beautiful piece of architecture.
We found it a little challenging to photograph as there are trees and other buildings nearby, so we decided to come up close and shoot some abstract-like photos.

After this we went back to the Space Needle with the full intention of going straight up. We had actually thought of going up twice, once in the afternoon, then again at night. To our surprise, when we were standing in line to buy tickets, we were told the earliest time we could go up would be 6pm. Note this was at 11am and a weekday to boot!. Obviously a very popular attraction! After asking some questions and learning that “once up there, we could stay as long as we wanted”, we decided to go up at 8pm. That would still give us the daylight views we wanted, then simply stay up there until dark to get those night shots.

With the tickets purchased and a time-slot secured, we headed off to Pike Place. We lucked out and got a parking spot no more than one block from the market. As we approached, we spotted the Starbucks store, located on the corner of 1st and Pike, literally across the road from the entrance to the market. How cool. I just had to have a coffee there so we went in and I ordered my standard drink, a Double Short Americano. This was indeed the very first Starbucks which opened in 1971. Pretty cool to be here and to have a coffee. We ended up sitting on their extremely narrow front patio and leisurely watched the world go by. The weather was perfect and we both thoroughly enjoyed the moment.

After that we crossed the road and went into the market . . . and were a little disappointed.
While quaint and very historic (it is one of the oldest markets in the US), we found the place a little rundown. Don’t get me wrong, it had lots of character, but we could not help but be a tad disappointed. The stalls were quite varied. Some jewelry stalls, food stalls and fish. The display of fish and crab was quite impressive, but the prices were exorbitant. We thought $14.99 per pound for Dungeness crab was outrageous. I guess you pay for the privilege of purchasing it at Pike Place market. There was also a roof-top nursery and we spent a little time there looking around as the views over the water were awesome. The highlight of market, in our view, was a visit to a tea and coffee store, where we bought some loose-leaf Ceylon tea. Linda has become quite the tea convert. Her journey into tea started when we were in Victoria, where we invested in a regular tea pot and a sampling of different teas. She is now hooked and has been trying different teas ever since. In particular, Linda has taken a liking to Orange Pekoe, but loves the English/Irish and Canadian Breakfast teas too.

We finished the trip downtown with a good ‘ol fashioned burger on a patio right on Pike Street. Again, we watched people and were quite amazed at how many different languages we heard.

After dinner, we headed back to the Space Needle and first went into the Chihuly Gardens and Glass museum and were blown away by the displays. I wrote a separate blog on that a few days ago.

So, finally, up the Needle we go. I should point out that I DO NOT like heights, but as Linda has dragged me up the Eiffel Tower and the London Eye in the past, I knew I could not get away with complaining too much (and I sheepishly admit to being very pleased afterwards that I DID go up these structures). So, up we went and after an elevator ride that seemed to take “hours”, we arrived at the very top (I later heard that the elevator travels at 10 mph and that the trip lasts only 40 seconds).

You exit inside the structure at the top. There are bars, souvenir shops, restrooms, a revolving restaurant and an observation deck outside. The observation deck runs all around the structure so you can circle the whole top enjoying the views in every direction.

After satisfying our initial goal of shooting in daylight, we sat down and had a glass of wine, waiting for it to get dark.

We had brought these small tripods which we could securely put up on the railing. That way we could do exposures of 30 or more seconds without risking movement. The resulting pictures were outstanding. Take a look below, click any of the photos to launch a full size view!

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We did not even know this place existed!

When purchasing tickets to go up the Space Needle in Seattle, we were asked if we also wanted tickets for the museum. A combined ticket was cheaper than buying each separately.

Well, we purchased them and went inside first and were “gob-smacked” (flabbergasted, blown away, etc) by what we saw. So beautiful! So unusual! So creative!

By now you’re probably wondering “what the heck is he talking about” so let me explain.

The Chihuly Garden and Glass museum has art on display completely made out of glass. Not just a bowl or lamp, but pieces that really defy description. Curly pieces, spherical pieces, HUGE pieces and above all, colorful pieces, all arranged into gardens, sculptures, chandelier-like “things” hanging from the ceiling, or aliens-like plant “things” seemingly growing in the garden.

The display has two distinct sections, an inside and an outdoors (garden) section, both are equally beautiful, but quite different.

Inside, each room is dark with the glass art being lit up in very creative ways. As a result, the artwork is stunningly displayed. Did I mention the colors are spectacular?

The gardens are also beautifully arranged with the glass art pieces placed among plants and flowers, as if they had sprung from the soil as alien-plants.

We spent quite some time going from room-to-room and then wandering outside among the flowerbeds. Eventually we had to leave else we would miss our time-slot for going up the Space Needle. We would have liked to stay longer so we could see the outside art being lit up by lights, but we just had to go.

We highly recommend this place as a fun and visually mesmerizing visit. We will be back, but will be better prepared so we can stay longer and soak up the beauty and inspiration this place radiates.

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We’ve used this RV Park as a base from which to visit Vancouver and Seattle. As we were curious to learn what Bellingham had to offer, we did some research and found . . . Whatcom Falls Park.

The park turned out to be amazingly pretty and very hard to believe it lies in the middle of suburbia. Walking around the many trails of the park we genuinely felt like being miles away from any civilization.

As the name suggests, there is a waterfall and quite a beautiful one too, although the water levels were kinda low when we visited. It’s the Whatcom creek that creates the falls and the creek meanders through the park offering many picturesque locations along the way.

We were highly bemused when a lady and her Golden Retriever walked by and stopped just a ways from where we were standing. The dog jumped into the creek and lay down in the water! The dog’s mom told us this was his favorite place and enjoys cooling down in the creek every time they come out for a walk. It had become a fixed routine for the dog and always jumped in the creek at the same place. After a few minutes, he was fine and jumped up on the shore, ready to continue his walk!

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We cruised these waterways from Anacortes to Victoria, BC, a route that takes you right through many of the islands. That trip was outstanding, one of those memorable vacations that will stay clear and foremost in our memories for quite a while to come, if not forever.

When staying at Anacortes, it made sense to us therefore to do some exploring of the islands to see more of them, but from the vantage point of solid-land. We decided on the Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands.

In researching the areas, a few locations resonated with us and we decided to go see for ourselves.

La Conner

Strictly speaking LA Conner is not on Fidalgo Island, but we felt it was close enough to be included in this blog post.
What a delightful town! It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is the host of the annual Tulip Festival, an event we sadly missed.

The town is gorgeous though and well worth a visit, even if just to stroll along the picturesque waterfront, or enjoy a cool drink or coffee and generally slow down and reflect on how wonderful life can be.

All this area used to be the home of several native indian tribes: the Swinomish, Samish, Lower Skagit, and Kikiallus, who joined together to form the present day Swinomish Indian Tribal Community.

The Swinomish Reservation lies just to the left in the picture above, right opposite La Conner. There is a park with some structures, clearly intended for community activitie.

On display there was a beautiful Swinomish poem by Caroline Jana Edwards, a Swinomish Tribal Member

Deception Pass

Deception Pass is the strait that separates Fidalgo Island from Whidbey Island. You cross from one island to the other via a pair of impressive bridges (also listed on the National Register of Historic Places).
The views from these bridges are nothing short of spectacular! There are car parks on either side of the bridges so getting to the views is easy, but somewhat intimidating for folks with a fear of heights (like myself) as the bridge is high and the pedestrian walk-way is narrow (so you can’t “stand back” from the edge). I did see a Bald Eagle soaring above me too. You’ll have to take my word for that as I had the wrong lens on my camera to get a decent shot.

Langley

At the South end of Whidbey Island is the small town of Langley, another gorgeously picturesque place to visit.

Langley is quite famous for art so it should be no surprise that we visited a gallery there. The gallery was owned and operated by 36 local artists. A Co-op. That made the work on display refreshingly diverse. Paintings, photography, drawings, sculptures, encaustics, you name it, it was there, in about any size and color imaginable. We ended up chatting to the “artist on duty” who told us about how the place functioned and gave us some tips about the community that is Langley.

He told us there is a pod of Orcas that resides in the area and that the town is very proud of that and has even installed a bell along the waterfront that you can ring if whales or Orcas are spotted. How cool is that!

In looking up some information about Langley, some interesting tidbits came up. For example, did you know that Langley was the first municipality in the US to have a woman-only council? This was back in 1919, just after Congress signed the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote. Very cool.

Another piece of interesting trivia for you is the fact that Langley attracted many “hippies” in the 60s and 70s. Initially, this caused some uneasiness with the established citizens, but over time, these two cultures assimilated, essentially adding their artistic skills and progressive ideas into the community. This of course, helped create today’s culture that makes Langley such an attractive place to live, work and visit.

Water and Sunsets

Unless it rains, you can pretty much be assured of getting a nice sunset anywhere on the island that has some sort of view. Beautiful colors, soft and gentle transitions between sea and sky, the odd island silhouette to add compositional interest, yes it is all there on these beautiful islands.

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The meal is actually simple to make. Here is what I did:

We purchased large prawns (13-15 count) and a beautiful looking Rib-Eye steak.
We also got some asparagus and baby portobello mushrooms.

I peeled the prawns, skewered them and brushed them with olive oil and garlic.
The steak was prepared with ground Mongolian Pink salt and freshly ground black pepper. I topped it off with a little butter.

We had seen a recipe on asparagus done in the oven so decided to give that a try (we normally grill asparagus). After cutting the ends off the asparagus, I spread them on a shallow pan, then sprinkled some olive oil and a little salt. To top it off, I added a gentle squeeze of lemon. Then popped them in a 425F oven for about 20 minutes.

The steak and skewered prawn went onto a hot grill outside for just a couple of minutes. We like our steak medium rare and used to meat thermometer to to make sure it got grilled just right. I grilled them for 3 minutes on one side, flipped them and removed them when the meat thermometer reached 125F.

I cut the mushrooms and sautéed them along with some onions and carrots.

Here is the end result.

Whoever said you can’t cook great meals in a motorhome obviously never tried. We had a delicious meal.

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Just about 2 months ago
We set out on the road
Seeking photo opportunities
Lookin’ for that perfect one
DMV screwed up, then screwed up some more
I guess you know the tune
Oh Lord, stuck in Washington . . .

With sincere apologies to John Fogarty and Creedence Clearwater Revival, I could not help but think of his song “Stuck in Lodi again” to depict our current situation.

You see, we are “stuck” in Washington, waiting for the DMV to issue my Class B Driver’s license.

It is now the 4th of July and about 7 weeks later than when I should have received my license . . . and I am probably still 2 weeks away, all due to some clerical error within the DMV.

I shall spare you the details of what has happened, but suffice to say that, after passing both the written and behind-the-wheel tests AND submitting a certificate from my doctor stating I am healthy enough for a commercial license, I still don’t have the license. Instead, I am using the Interim License, that piece of paper the DMV issues while you wait for the real thing to be sent to you. Valid here in the US, but (and this is the issue) Canada does not recognize that piece of paper, so we are prevented from crossing the border.

After a multitude calls, made over the course of 4 weeks, with each person I spoke to telling me the issue is fixed and the license is on its way and should be there in 2-3 weeks, I finally tracked down the supervisor of the person handling my license. She admitted there had been an error and that her department had never issued the “All Clear”. She fixed that right there, with me on the phone.

As I believe she really had the authority to do that, I now have confidence the license is finally on its way. Trouble is, I will have it in my hands about 2 months later than I originally expected.

So here we are in Washington, waiting, just hanging out for something to happen. We are in an RV Park in Bellingham, about as close to the Canadian border as we can get. With full respect to the people in Washington, we are getting impatient. Washington is beautiful, but we want to move on. We had originally anticipated to be somewhere in the Yukon Territory by now and having traveled all the way through British Columbia. Yet here we are, still in Washington.

While we have now given up on traveling to Alaska this trip, we DO want to go to Jasper and Banff from here and are waiting with baited breath for this infernal license to arrive.

What is perhaps most frustrating is that our frame of mind is no longer excited about being here (in Washington). We’ve been to the Olympic Peninsula, seen Mount St. Helens and Mt Rainier and have driven through many parts of the Cascades, visited North Cascades National Park, saw orcas in the Hood Canal, took a cruise through the San Juan islands, visited Victoria, BC, explored Anacortes and Fidalgo Island, drove right across Widley Island and visited art galleries in Langley . . . All beautiful, but . . .

We refuse to just sit in the motorhome and do nothing (although believe me, it is tempting), so we are really trying to find things to do just so we get out. Today we visited a local park called Whatcom Falls Park which had a waterfall. On Wednesday, we will take our Subaru Forester and drive to Vancouver (Linda will drive so there will be no issues if she needs to show a driver’s license) and on Friday, we will head South and spend a day in Seattle. All good activities, but it is a “mental” thing – we want to be in Canada.

There are also some housekeeping issues that need attending, the awning straps I need to replace, look into the coach leveling system, which seems to be having issues and the WiFi Ranger, which is not performing the way I believe it should be. Also, Linda has been wanting some quality time with her Art and we both have some writing planned for the blog. . .

So, all in all, we are keeping ourselves busy, but we ARE frustrated. We hope to be able to leave on the 20th, so still another 2 weeks so. . . Sigh . . . .

Signed Stuck in Washington

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It is covered in snow, all year long, which adds to its visibility. You simply cannot help but be in awe.

Mt. Rainier is one of the many volcanos in the “Ring of Fire” the seismically active strip that starts in South America, runs up the coast of South and North America (think San Andreas Fault line) up around Alaska to Russia and down along the West Coast of South East Asia and ending in the Southern hemisphere in New Zealand. A HUGE area of course, but the Ring of Fire is where you find the vast majority of the world’s volcanos. In fact, 75% of the world’s volcanos are found along this strip and an amazing 22 of the 25 largest eruptions in the past 11,700 years have taken place along this strip. It has something to do with tectonic plates and how the earth’s crust is formed.
I guess you can tell I find this kind of information amazingly interesting and it excites me no end to be here, in person, to see it a small portion of it (although I’d be considerably less excited if something blew up).

I recently wrote about Mount St. Helens, also part of the Ring of File, as is Mount Shasta in California. If you missed it, you can read it here.

Anyway, back to Mt Rainier and the Mt. Rainier National Park, another of the National Parks on our list to see this trip.
We were parked in Randle, WA, about 25 miles from the park entrance so a short trip to get there. We essentially took the “Mount Rainier Loop”, one of scenic loop drives that takes you across the entire southern part of the park. We had been warned by the nice man at the visitor’s center that the road was “bumpy”. Well he was not kidding, the road LOOKED fine, but rattled us considerably as we approached the park. By the time we got to the park’s entrance we were well and truly shaken!

The mountain is of course in view pretty much the entire way with only trees occasionally obscuring the view.

We entered the park at the Nisqually Entrance, in the South West corner of the park and followed the Nisqually-Paradise road from West to East, exiting the park at the Stevens Canyon Entrance. Frequent stops were made of course to admire the magnificent views which presented themselves all along this route and take photos. Mountains and waterfalls dominated the scenic opportunities. The Christine Falls especially were spectacular!

Paradise is the location of a large visitors center and is located right below the mountain and offers fantastic views. It is also the place where hikers and skiers go to start their adventure and, to our somewhat amazement, people were still skying there. Additionally, lots of families with toboggans were out having fun in the snow.

Most national parks offer water bottle refill stations (rather sell more plastic bottles) and the water from the fountain there is ICY COLD, obviously cooled by the abundance of ice and snow which are available year round. Wonderfully refreshing and so much better than buying more plastic.

Just beyond the visitor’s center at Paradise is the aptly named Reflection Lake, which was still mostly frozen over (note that were there in June). We DID spot a section of the lake where the ice had melted and we got a few photos there, but nothing like the view you would have had on a clear lake where the entire mountain is reflected in the still water. We will have to come back later in the season to get those shots.

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So it was with me, I was living in the Netherlands at the time. Holland is a small country with hardly any “empty space” at all and I remember I found it hard to really comprehend the massive scale of the Mount St. Helens eruption. Think about it, if this volcano had been in the center of the Netherlands, most of that small country would have been obliterated. I remember the event and being in awe at the catastrophe and marveled at the photos and stories of eye-witnesses that started to emerge in the weeks after the event itself.

Fast forward to 2016, thirty six years later and imagine the feelings of anticipation that went through me when heading out to see this mountain. It stirred up those, now long forgotten, feelings of wonder and amazement, along with new emotions that went something like . . “WOW, I am actually going to see this place”, “what will it look like now” and the occasional thought along the lines of . . “what if it blows up again?”.

So . . . seeing this mountain was quite an event, almost spiritual as it really reminds us humans of how small and insignificant we are within the grand scheme of things. One simply CANNOT be impressed by what you see, marvel at the sheer size of the area and feel a deep respect for that universe and be humbled by it all.

Getting up-close to the areas that blew up is amazing, so much larger than I had imagined when trying to visualize it way back then. Even today, thirty six years after the event itself, the scars are still very visible. One of the most noticable signs of the enormous “blast” of the eruption is the unimaginable number of trees lying on the mountain sides. Whole forests were simply blown over, matures trees snapping in two like they were no bigger than a match-stick. Take a close look at this photo. You can see fallen trees covering the entire mountain side, all pointing in the same direction, clearly showing the direction of the blast. In the top left, you can also see trees still standing, obviously protected by the mountain, but still dead.

Yet Mother Earth is healing itself as you can see below.

New growth is everywhere. There is new grass, new wildflowers and masses of new trees, even new lakes and rivers and the mountain itself is quite different. The new trees are quite large, but when looking at them, you cannot help but sense there is something not quite right. There is “something” different about the forested mountainsides. Initially, that feeling is at a sub-conscious level, then it hits you, there is an unusual “uniformity” about the trees. They are all the same height, as if all planted on the same day, yet they are not planted in rows, the growth is quite random. And that is probably exactly what happened – they were not “planted” by human hands but did all start growing around the same time. This “uniformity” is somewhat unsettling at first, until you realize this is Nature simply reclaiming the mountain sides that were taken away by the eruption. A sense of wonder sets in and a deep sense of respect for how wonderful nature really is.

Access roads

We were staying in a place called Randle, which is located almost exactly half-way between Mt Rainier and Mount St. Helens. We strategically picked that location so it would be a brief drive to both locations. Then we heard that Hwy 99, which takes you to Windy Ridge, was closed due to a land-slide.
As a result, we needed to drive some 110 miles to the other side of the mountain, using Hwy 504, to get to the Johnston Ridge Observatory the route from which we took these photos. As a result, we never got to see Spirit Lake, a lake heavily affected by the blast.

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