....and DriftOff!

Firstly, props to Kane Rogers for the generous loan of his fine HP laptop, and help in setting up this blog. It's not normally the sort of thing I'd foist off on others, just so's ya know, as it smacks too much of the dreaded "evening of slides of our trip to" wherever. Who wants to see photos of other people enjoying themselves, now really? Or read about it? But Kane suggested it and made it possible, so if you've made it this far, the answer, apparently, is YOU!

After last-minute running around, which included tricking bro Mark into being executor of our wills, should we expire enroute, and getting he and his window installer (!) to sign them (in the midst of his own dilema of finding a gas pipe running through the window opening he'd just cut in Mark's kitchen), we sat at the border for most of an hour before being waved through by an unreasonably cheerful guard. So it was almost 1PM before we were really 'on the road', to save the US economy one taco at a time. La Conner was a bust, with tulip season about a month delayed, and all the eateries over-priced and under-appealing. But the weather was warm and there were a couple of places with fabulous woodcrafts for the wealthy, and everyone was ever-so-friendly. Tim, the English butler who lives in our Tom Tom, took us on our first unexpected detour, putting us UNDER the bridge to Whidbey Island, but we got it sorted out, and found the ferry to Port Townsend alright. (It was mostly our fault anyway, as we take a perverse delight in ignoring Tim's instructions, forcing him into endless re-routing calculations while patiently imploring us to turn around at the first opportunity. He never gets frustrated or sarcastic...ever) In the lineup behind us was a disappointingly normal-looking guy in a truck worthy of Red Green. We mightn't have noticed it but for two young fellows who came running by with their cameras, laughing and pointing. The 1st pic shows their reaction to his 'stereo', while the 2nd shows off the 'sanitary installation'. Be sure to click on the 1st pic...the miniature doesn't do it justice.

We probably should have stayed in Port Townsend, or Port Angeles, but were determined to make Beaver by nightfall (at least I was!) and so missed most of Lake Crescent in the descending gloom, which as far as we could tell was easily the nicest part of the drive along the north edge of the Olympic Peninsula: fast twisty road along the lake edge, with a low armco barrier that runs for miles. Beaver couldn't have been more than one or two houses, as we missed it completely and ended up in Forks, setting for the Twilight vampire series. The only thing scarey there was the bathroom in our motel. Oh yeah, that and the jets taking off at 5:30AM from what we can only assume was an aircraft carrier we saw leaving Puget Sound.