Lac La Hache, BC, Chilliwack, BC, White Salmon, WA, Fruitland, ID

 

Look closely you can make out our RV in the center. It was  a lovely RV Park right on a lake. This is all we have to talk about now. Driving miles and the park we stay in for around 18 hours.

If you look closely you can see 2 eagles. We watched them fish the lake, with a much higher success rate than all the people in boats with thousands of dollars of gear. Funny Eh?

Chilliwack, BC just outside of Vancouver. The road down to Chilliwack was a beautiful, white knuckled, aggravating as hell, tortuous ride. Everything a tourist in a car or on a motorcycle would love, dodging trucks and RV's, winding your way through tall mountains, along wide rivers with lots of tight turns and elevation changes. We now understand why they don't allow handguns in Canada-enough said.
We get settled and get in the Ford and head to the US border crossing to get a list of the latest restrictions for crossing the border- it changes every day. Nice enough folks on both sides- we had to cross over and back again to get the damn list of restrictions. Anyway, now we are educated, or some form of the term, and looking for a bunch of chicken wings and some cold beer. We find a nice little place called Earls, and relax a little with a cold drink and a snack.

White Salmon, Washington. Another long day of driving and extreme aggravation. We cross the border in Sumas- the sign says it is a 10 minute wait. An hour later, after we have purged the RV of all fruits, vegetables and everything else the US government says they won't let across the border, we finally get to the checkpoint and discover a Border Patrol Agent from Lewisville Texas. Well, we discuss the changes to the town, what things are like in Denton these days, his parents last trip to Lewisville, etc and without so much as a question about firearms, food, alcohol, tobacco, or anything else pertinent to entering the country, we bounce on through. Feeling safe yet?
Since we crossed in Sumas, which is the middle of nowhere, we now wind our way through about a million tiny towns, everyone of which decided to route the state highway (9) through the middle of their downtown area, and put stop lights and stop signs where ever there was an antique shop they thought you might want to stop at. It only gets better as we travel through Bellingham and Seattle, and have traffic backed up for miles on Interstate 5. It's Sunday for Pete's sake, where the hell are all these people going? We finally get South of Tacoma, and find out our traffic was nothing compared to the poor souls going north from Portland- it has to be backed up for 25 miles. Anyway, we make it through Portland, get some fuel, and head down the Columbia river  on I-84. Beautiful road. The we get to cross the river on the "Bridge of the Gods", no kidding. The "gods" are apparently very thin, we had to go 15 mph and even then the lanes were just not wide enough. And then it gets REAL interesting. A series of tunnels, all extremely narrow, and all with less than enough vertical clearance for the RV. The edges of all 6 tunnels are less than the required 13"6". So we get to ride in the middle of the tunnel, straddling the center line and hoping another car or god forbid a 18 wheeler, doesn't enter the tunnel going the opposite direction.  

Mt Rainier

 Mt Hood

The dreaded tunnels, those yellow signs are not there because everything is ok

Bridge over the Columbia River we took after leaving White Salmon on the way to Idaho

This bridge is way wider than the first one, a walk in the park. Got an extra foot an a half to play with.

One of the many damns we saw along the Columbia river. They generate a ton of power along the river with a series of damns, all with lock systems to assist the river traffic, a lot of really big barges etc. We had an uneventful drive the width of Oregon on I-84, all good roads with excellent weather.