Sorry, no pictures

Well, we’ve officially made it to the States and so far we have survived. The State Parks that we’re camping at have been really nice, despite that their washrooms don’t carry soap. We’ve been fortunate in the bug department too, as there have been relatively few. Things have been going well, overall.

Our first day we drove from Edmonton to Saskatoon (Sunday), Monday we drove from Saskatoon to Lethbridge and stayed at Aaron Roth’s place. It was good to visit with him again, and he gave us a grand tour of the south and west of Lethbridge, and had some sweet gelato, then watched some cool fountain waterworks. Tuesday we drove from Lethbridge to Spokane, Washington. We decided to take the route through Waterton Glacier National Park, which is (I believe) part of the Rockies. It was beautiful, and I drove the whole exciting part. For those in BC – it was like the road from highway 97 to Whistler (unless they’ve made it more safe since I was last on it). Narrow lane along the ridge of the mountains, many cars going both ways, usually way below the speed limit, Andy and Darryl almost wetting themselves scared at the height. It was all so exciting! Beautiful scenery, and an absolutely gorgeous drive, and I highly, highly recommend to people this park, as it’s completely worth seeing if you’re in the area. It is a $25 fee, but it gives you a 7 day pass. Unfortunately we won’t be using the rest of ours, but now Andy and I know about it, we’ll be back there at some point.

Yesterday we drove from Spokane to Ridgecrest, Washington. We planned the drive to go between Mount Rainer (volcano) and Mount St. Helen. Unfortunately, though the scenery was relatively pretty, it didn’t hold the promise of really viewing the mountains we were hoping to see. We did stop at the Mount St. Helen’s visitor’s centre, but we arrived 10 minutes before closing, so we didn’t get the tour through the image gallery of the mountain blowing up, nor did we get to see the movie they had about the event and the mountain. I’d like to come back and do some camping and hiking in the area, though, as it looks like a nice enough area, and it has tons of hiking trails and the like, which would be great to see, especially since volcanic ash/lava provides such a different and rich mineral base for plants, it would be neat to explore.

So today we’re heading from Ridgefield, Washington, to Crescent City, California. As I’m typing this, we’re passing through Vancouver, Washington, which is close to the Oregon border. No, we will not be driving down the Oregon coast, though I hear from many, many people that it’s beautiful. The only coast we’ll be seeing will be California’s, though I don’t think it’s too much of a second-place option. Oooh! a bridge! And now we’re officially in Portland, Oregon. Bam! just like that. That was the Columbia River that we crossed. So officially on the itinerary today, we’ll be hitting a department store (for the right number of underwear we forgot to pack for Andy), a grocery store (did you know that so far in the cities we’re been in, they have Safeway?), and a Starbucks so that we can surf the net and I can upload this update.

Hope everyone else is doing well, we’re enjoying ourselves immensely, so don’t have too many worries about us. If you want a postcard, send us your address. We might be able to send one from California once we’re there. No guarantees, but if we have you’re address it’s at least likely. Next update will be from sunny California!

ps. it’s now 2 days later than when I initially thought I’d be posting this. We’ve had terrible luck finding wifi. We’re currently in San Francisco and heading to San Simeon campground today.