Date: 18 July 2001 (Wednesday)

Start: Capilano RV Park, North Vancouver BC

End: Trailer Inn, Yakima WA (290 miles)

The temperature was 56f when we arose, still under gray skies.

We ate, dumped, put out the trash, hooked up, and left the campground. Up the hill, onto TC-1 (the TransCanadian) and eastward to 176^th Street, which is also BC-15 to Blaine, WA and US Customs.

We answered the questions and a bored customs agent said, "Bye-bye". So we went bye-bye from there and smack onto Interstate 5.

I’d forgotten what Interstate traffic is like. We were running much faster than I like to run and still just held our own in the right lane. There were cement trucks and log trucks and all sorts of things running like crazy down that road.

We reached Marysville and I decided it would be good to refuel before getting deeper into Seattle, a good decision as it happened. The following event was a bad decision. I got into a gas station/food mart with a very restricted turning area. I should have skipped it and gone elsewhere. In departing, I came too close to a post guarding the pumps and scraped the fiberglass on the street side down low and bent the heater cover. The fiberglass will need replacing and I’ll need a new cover for the heater.

We went on, turned off I-5 onto I-405 to avoid most of the Seattle area, and then turned east on I-90. We slowly climbed to Snoqualmie Pass at 3,022 feet. Then we drifted down into the lee of the coastal mountain range.

It got drier and drier as we went. We reached Ellensburg and turned off onto I-82. From there to Yakima, the highway goes over three ridges with broad but relatively deep valleys between them. The truck handled it just fine, but these hills were dead, just plain dead brown.

We turned into Yakima and the campground (nice place, but not great) and settled in. Later, we found on the evening weather that Yakima has had a trace of precipitation this month (18 days) as opposed to the normal 0.2 inches expected in July. The humidity was 31%.

On the other hand, the temperature here in mid-afternoon was 78f as opposed to the normal 88f, so we’re here on a nice day.

This town shows the influence of the weather around here. It’s dusty and dry and brown.

There have been forest fires in the forests west of here. They’ve just finished burying four young people, firefighters who died when a freak turn of wind put the fire on them. Terribly sad.

We did dinner out tonight across the street at the Doubletree. After dinner, I took the cover off the trailer’s heater to make sure there’s no damage. It looks ok underneath the cover.

Tomorrow, it’s on to Bend and the Owen's cousin Helen.