No sooner than we settled into Birch Bay but our friend John suggested we get together with him and our friends Henk and Thea at Bob's Burgers and Brew in Ferndale for lunch the next day. We did just that and had a great time, here is Diane, John, Henk, and Thea outside Bob's after lunch on August 30th.
The next day we went to get our mail and Diane's new Dell notebook computer in Poulsbo. We decided to drive onto Whidbey Island and take the ferry to Port Townsend.
It was a beautiful day and the drive was scenic, but there were many construction zones and other slow downs. When we got to the ferry it was full and we watched it pull away.
We got to hang around for an hour and wait for the next ferry. This was a story on one of the newspapers:
Our motorhome is about 350 sq feet with the slides open, so these condos are smaller.
We were at the front of the ferry. This ferry was about 1/3rd full, we have no idea why the earlier one was full.
The state park campground is right next to the ferry dock and looks quite nice.
Port Townsend in the distance:
After we got off the ferry we headed towards Poulsbo. Just to add to our trip they opened up the Hood Canal Bridge for marine traffic and we had to wait for the bridge to reopen to proceed to Poulsbo. It ended up being a 5hr and 20min trip.
It was good to see Nancie and Sandy again. We went to our favorite restaurant, New King's Wok, in Silverdale for a late lunch. After visiting a while we took our mail and the new notebook computer and headed back to Birch Bay. This time we took the Edmonds/Kingston ferry and headed north.
Here is Mount Rainier from the ferry:
Another ferry on the same run:
Another shot of Mount Rainier with a bit of the Seattle skyline in the distance:
This trip took about 3hrs and 20min, much faster but not as scenic.
We managed to stay quite busy at Birch Bay. We met up with many friends. Our friends Dave and Connie, who we camped with in Seward, AK, came over one day as they were camped in Mount Vernon. We ended up at Paso Del Norte in Blaine for a 4-star lunch. We met up with our friend John another day.
On September 2nd we drove down to Burlington and had lunch with our friend Dick at another Bob's Burgers and Brew, also good. We then stopped by Camping World and went with Dick to his church where Ann will be honored here in this garden.
Then we went to his Mount Vernon house and stayed until after dinner. Here is Dick's cat Huggy:
In Mount Vernon the fireweed was still blooming:
Another day we met with Bill's friends Floyd and Patti at their house in Bellingham. Bill went to college with both of them. We had a great visit and Diane finally met them after exchanging Christmas cards for so long.
We were amazed how busy we were in Birch Bay, we need to come back.
On September 5th we moved 124 miles to Tall Chief in Fall City again, our last stay was in May. This time we were next to our favorite spot and had to settle for weak 30AMP service.
While at Tall Chief our Autoformer died. Bill called up Camping World and found they were out of stock in Tacoma, but had them in Burlington. Bill dropped Diane off for her hair appointment and made the hour and 20 minute drive to the Burlington Camping World and bought a new one. We really need the Autoformer at Tall Chief on 30AMP, it is easy to be down to 105 volts without the boost.
We got the bicycles back out of storage while at Tall Chief. We were right to leave them for the Alaska trip, we really would not have ridden them and the road grime would have damaged them.
Since we were in the area we finally got to go to a picnic we had missed the last few years. You can see how much fun it was:
September 10th we drove 104 miles south to Outback RV Park in Rochester, another place we frequent and were last at in May. At a rest area we saw this vintage car and trailer:
Here is our campsite at Outback with the bikes on the back:
We visited Bill's mother and the birds were really out in force at her feeders:
September 14th we drove 94 miles to Eagle Tree RV Park in Poulsbo, where we always stay to visit Diane's aunt Nancie. We were last here in May.
The view was still quite nice at Nancie's with cormorants on the raft:
We helped Nancie, Sandy, Chris and Claire get the house next door ready for winter rental, including moving furniture into a storage unit. We also helped the tenants move their furniture in.
September 18th found us back at Tall Chief for ten days after a 108 mile journey. This time we had our favorite campsite since Tall Chief was much less populated than it was eight days earlier.
Diane had her dentist visit while we were in Fall City. We also visited with friends in the area. Our friends Dan and Jenny were camped only a few sites away so we got a lot of visiting in. Jenny had the new 10Mpixel Sony SLR digital camera that supports Minolta lenses and let Bill try his old lenses on it. Luckily the lenses were easy to find in the storage unit. The camera was very nice and responsive, it is a Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 and here is a review. Bill's 400mm lens worked really well on this camera and he is tempted to get one himself.