Washington Coast

After a few days outside of Seattle we found ourselves on the Washington coast in an area we had not seen near Ocean Shores, in Ocean City. On this part of our trip we had seven other families around us and we did not see the kids for hours on end. Kids from 18 to 3 all playing together with little or no problems. The first couple of days the kids dug bunkers in the sand around the playground and had sand wars until the old campground rangers squashed the fun. Now if the kids were leaving these sand bunkers and not filling them in after they were done I would be able to see the issue  but they were filled in when done and they didnt leave other kids out of the fun.

We were able to be part of the first beach fire the Hamilton's have ever done, the kids went around the beach and gathered huge logs that kept this fire going until 3am.  Laura and I went a little farther down the road and were able to drive out on the beach and look around which was fun. We had a night out at a bar down the road called the "Green Lantern" which had great ribs and beer.



We went to a lake up the coast with Barb and the Traviglino's to watch a boat race and sun ourselves. This lake also had the largest Spruce Tree in Washington or maybe the world. I also dragged the family for yet another National Park excursion where, you guessed it, we got another badge. The HOH Rainforest in Olympic National Park is another place that I enjoyed fishing and relaxing.

On our last day at this wonderful RV park we were informed of a whale that had washed up on the beach. This was another first for the Hamilton Clan on this wonderful trip around our country. It looks like this one died at sea and just finally washed up. Now we are heading back to Seattle for a nice visit with Mom and Bob.

Washington

           After our wonderful adventure in Glacier we headed West to Washington. We stopped at a campground north of Spokane after leaving Montana. This Thousand Trails had seen better days and it was obvious that the KOA side of it was way better maintained but its free for us so we stayed. The second night of our stay we had a pretty bad storm that had lots of thunder and lightning but nothing we haven't seen before all over the US. While I was working the power went out so we had dinner with the Traviglino's and I set off with Laura to find out when the power would be back on. Now we knew there was wind, rain and lightning but we had no idea that the whole park was literally in shambles after the storm passed. We attempted to go out one road to find three trees blocking our way. Another road had cars, tents and trailers crushed by huge trees and of course our way was blocked. We finally found a road we could use by dodging trees and when we got to the main road we could see the front of the park was worse hit than what we had come through. This place looked like a war zone and we were the only ones not affected. Needles to say we moved to the open field by the main gate just in case another storm came through all the while Laura was trying to push a a tree over onto our rig so she could have that wonderful used toy hauler.

        We decided to cut our stay short there and headed to Quincy Washington to another Thousand Trails where we there was supposed to be river access from the campground. This part of our trip had been a little interesting already but when we arrived we were told it was $1000 fine for going near the river because the damn had a 30 foot crack. I was a little concerned about this to say the least but we were high enough on the valley floor that any failure on the damn MIGHT protect us all. The heat in this canyon was at 100 Degrees and of course they had closed the pool because some parent didn't notice their kid tacking a huge poodle. Our little Wildcat air conditioner just cant keep up with cooling the trailer if the temps are over 95 so without the pool we all decided this was not where we wanted to be.

            The group decided to head to an encore park just outside of Seattle where we spent a several days with several other families and the weather was just right. Anything over 78 degrees and the love of my life turns into a raging nightmare so this was the perfect spot. Now that we were stable for a few days we could go see some sights in the Seattle area. A bunch of families decided to use the Seattle  public transportation and hopped a bus into downtown.

Our first stop was the Pike street market where we wondered around and looked at all the wonderful sea food. We were also delighted to see the famous fish throwing which Laura and I have come back to see several times in our stops to Seattle.

While wondering around the market my lovely wife had to stop and play with sasquach for a bit and of course the famous wall of chewing gum. Now this was really more than a little disturbing to me but its kind of a trademark of the market in downtown Seattle. In the mall below the market we found some wonderful stores and came across this stop with a life size photo of the largest man.

We had a wonderful lunch of clam chowder and hot dogs with a little ice cream to finish off the visit before jumping another bus back to the RV park. Seattle is one of my favorite cities, during the summer but I don't know if I could handle the lack of sun in the winter. Due to my work schedule we only had one trip downtown and would have to do the rest of our sight seeing when we came back to spend with my mom in Auburn.

Everything for a reason!

Disaster…

    Un-mitigated disaster is the only phrase I could come up with to describe the scene that was about to unfold. As we rounded the last of the three loops it became abundantly clear that yet again, all of the spots that might have conceivably allowed a 32-foot trailer were occupied, often by a tiny tent, or possibly two. “They have the right to be here too,” I reminded myself.  Meanwhile the 9 year old in me screamed, “Get out of my spot! What the hell are tent campers doing in Glacier National Park anyway? Don’t they know this place is chock full of Grizzly bears, waiting to drag them out of their puny little tents and eviscerate them while they sleep????”  Happy campers took all of the spots that we could have possibly fit into. Alan confirmed this with the camp host who suggested we drive out to Browning to find a place. And, yes, she conceded it was crazy that the park filled up by 11:30 on a Tuesday when the website so CLEARLY stated that it hadn’t filled until 9 pm the previous two weeks. 

     I shook from head to toe, my body wracked with childlike sobs as I could no longer contain my bitter, bitter disappointment. For weeks now I had envisioned taking my children to the same idyllic spot where I had spent blissful weeks during the summers of my childhood with my best friend, Julie’s family in Two Medicine, Glacier. I had planned each moment in my mind. First we would find heart-shaped rocks along the beach, playing in the glacial waters. Next we would hike across the tiny bridge and maybe catch the Sinopah boat tour. We would catch Brown trout and eat them with Mac and Cheese, prepared just the way Don did, butter, lemon and onion wrapped in foil. Finally, the pinnacle, desert at the camp store, piping hot Fry bread and huckleberry milkshakes. Oh the campstore, smelling of cedar, permeating every membrane, every article of clothing and each memory. The smell filling my dreams for weeks now. I was bitterly, bitterly disappointed. Unable to hold out a second longer I gave in to the sobbing 6 year old inside and crumpled in the passenger seat. My oldest son, Jacob, reached around the seat, patting my shoulder and saying, it’s alright Mom, everything is okay, everything happens for a reason.

Hidden falls

     I couldn’t hear his sage advice at that moment. “Everything happens for a reason” was the kind of crap I would spout when he was disappointed. That certainly wouldn’t hold true in this case.

We retreated down the mountainside. I had remembered a small family owned place just outside the park, the Lazy Y. The rates quoted on the website were astronomical but, Alan assured me, it would only be for one night, then we would be up at the crack of dawn, stalking people until they left a site. Now two days down, we would still have two nights to enjoy the park.

As we pulled in to the unattended park, we noticed a hand written sign on the door of a tiny office. The rate would be a mere $25 a night for full hook-ups. That means not only power but sewer hooks ups were included as well. Only $5 more than the spot I had so sacredly held at Two Medicine, with NO water, and NO sewer.

The place where Julie and I hid a time capsule at 12 years old!

In front of Sinopah Mt. At Two Medicine Lake

But, what about the view of Two Med Lake I wouldn’t be getting from my campsite? From our little spot amidst the trees I was able to see the sweet Cliffside chapel of my best friend Julie’s wedding 14 years prior. And below that, a draw in which we were privileged to see three deer eating breakfast while a coyote crossed the ridge above them.

"Julie's" Chapel

And what of the camp store? It had been taken over in recent years by a larger corporation. It smelled, faintly, of cedar. The Fry bread was gone, the huckleberry shakes, once made by hand, had been replaced with a frozen yogurt dispenser. They had Huckleberry flavor there. It tasted like soap. Soap and disappointment. Instead, the boys and I played in the lake, went into town and met an amazing Lithuanian couple working at “Brownies” serving exquisite Huckleberry Ice Cream. We talked to them for an hour about traveling and world citizens. We met a girl with her new puppy and went to the lodge to listen to Gospel, sung in barbershop style. The next day we stayed at our park with our wonderful host and chatted over coffee while watching the ravine. We spent the day exploring parts of the park I had never seen, and re-visiting old sights too. Things I would not have done had we stayed at the lake. Jacob, of course, was right. “Everything works out for a reason.” And, more clearly to me now than ever, we are right where we are meant to be.

Hiking, when you have Aiden, bear bells are not necessary....

 

Getting their Glacier Badge, Proud Mamma!

Going to the Sun Highway

Where we've been up to September 2014 in the Wildcat...

visited 38 states (76%)
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Washington, the traveling village....

     We are in Ocean Shores, Washington. It’s lovely, the beach is a few hundred yards away, down a grassy path. I am explaining, yet again, to our new neighbor, why we have Colorado plates but still this 32-foot can is our home. I am telling him that we are here, caravanning with 6 other families and he says, “So you are gypsies!” That makes me laugh, in the year we have been out here no one has said it but I am sure plenty have thought it. I have grown up with the nickname “gypsy”, or gypsfelia, having a father with an intricate vocabulary and a strange sense of humor. (I have also been lovingly named moosedrool at times!) So I am happy to embrace this man’s interpretation of the situation. He is staying in a tent next to us, behind his sister's Airstream. He is a Vietnam vet who lives at the foot of Rainer Mountain. This weekend he is visiting his sister, who travels with her two dogs, one whose back legs don’t work and must be carried out to enjoy the sun. She hauls a gorgeous Airstream around, a solo traveler.   

      They are but one of a hundred stories I have heard as we move from place to place. That is half the fun of this journey. The people we meet are amazing and many of them attest to the kindness of “RV” communities. They are often very open-minded. And, to be fair, they can afford to be. These are not their grandkids out here on the road, we are not their kids forsaking stability for experience. Each time someone tells us how much they admire the choice we’ve made, I wonder if they would feel the same if we were their family?  The follow up questions are always the same, “How do you support this lifestyle?” And I tell them of my amazing husband who spends all night tucked into a little desk in the corner of our slide, working on the computer and then trying to sleep in the daytime while we do school mere feet from his bed. Thank god for earplugs!  They ask about school and I tell them we homeschool, which has become so commonplace it seems that people rarely bat an eye. Once these formalities are out of the way people begin to tell amazing stories that detail how they got to this point. And more often than not they give us the best ideas for what to see, and where to go. The ebb and flow of this traveling community is so unique!

Barbra...Where have you been all my life? With your crab...

     And yet, there are pieces that are so classic. I love that most mornings my friend Kimberly and I wake before the rest of our family and meet for coffee. We aren’t much for gossip so we talk about kids and husbands and laundry and dogs and educating on the road. It is so much like the picture I have painted in my head of the idyllic home of the fifties. Women meeting for coffee or talking over the fences about the home fires. I realize I am getting to be a stay at home mom, finally! Three of the men meet in one of the rigs to work during the day, on their computers. Or they go into town and work from coffee shops if the internet signal is too low.  We meet for cocktails and card games at night while the kids live the idyllic lifestyle we so wanted for them. They are running in packs,  (or maybe herds?) between the campers and the playground. Today, they are digging holes two feet in diameter and nearly as deep, all around the volleyball court. There are 8 families here this time, we are all members of Thousand Trails so we move from TT to TT in groups as it suits people.  Many of us are able to do 2 weeks in before we spend a week out of the system, others are able to do three weeks and move from park to park. We become a traveling neighborhood. Each month the houses are in a different space, the view changes but everything else is pretty much the same. We take the kids on homeschool fieldtrips, walk all our dogs together and engage in “village” parenting. The families here are varied, from un-schoolers, to road schoolers to people like myself with an (overly) strict curriculum. Some are computer programmers, some sell natural oils.  Many are gluten free, some are paleo some are vegan. (there is never a shortage of Almond milk to borrow.) And, just as in the suburbs, some have amazing rigs, others have installed a residential fridge and there is a constant one-upping of gadgets. In our circles there is a clear division of people who own vitamix-ers and those who have not yet succumbed to the seduction. I won’t even go into the Great Berkey debate of 2014. (Clearly the Berkey is good and right.) We have heated discussions, on the weekly radio show, about whether or not one should have a washing machine in their rig or take it to the laundry mat and do six loads all at once. All in all, traveling in a village mirrors suburban life to a great degree. In fact, it's time for tea and a lesson in Dutch from Pieter and Clementine next door! (Yes they do have a vita mixer... We won't discuss the Berkey...)

(Picts from our field trip to Pike Street Market..)

Kimberly, Dominick and husband Christopher

This is Just THREE of the families!

   

The GUM wall! Chewed gum, oh Yum!!!!

(For more information check out my friend Kimberly’s group Fulltime Families. She is the sole reason we are able to find each other and build these relationships, an extraordinary woman, she has taken a virtual community and made it a physical reality!)

Brand new on the Road family of 8! Welcome!

Our Very First Beach Fire!!!

My peeps!