Crossing Into Washington

One of the things we noticed right away while crossing through Oregon was the abundance of bright yellow rhododendron bushes virtually everywhere.  They were even on the dunes near the beaches. After we crossed back into Idaho, they disappeared.  We missed the Rhoddy parade in St. Angeles by one day.

US 101 in Washington is miles and miles of absolutely nothing by trees and road. The Hoh River is a green color but all the other rivers and streams are a slate gray color…just didn’t look like I expected.

On US 101 south of Forks, we noticed several groups of water mains coming out of the side of the mountain near the roadway.  They projected out then disappeared into the ground.

We finally saw all of three deer grazing alongside the road just west of Pt. Angeles.  We ended up on the northern side of Mt. Olympic National Park for the night.  The next morning as we were leaving, six deer crossed the road in front of us.

As we followed US 101 around the national park, we noticed street signs “Johnnycomelately Creek Road“ and “Linger Longer Lane” in Quilcene.  Then in Sheldon we saw the “Skyline Drive-In” and, yes, they were showing new movies!

We traveled down US 101 to connect with I-5 North to pick up US 2 to head back east but decided once we got on I-5 to take I-90 instead of US 2 as they both met in Spokane and I-90 would be faster.  We passed through Bonners Ferry, ID, and enter Glacier National Park on the west side.

We were disappointed to learn that the Going-to-the-Sun Road was only open about fourteen miles up to Avalanche Campground and Picnic areas. The road is being reconstructed after almost 100 years and also has yet to be completely plowed.  Snow fall was more than usual this year.

 The only campground reachable from there was Apgar and only the A Loop was open.  All the camp sites were for both RVs and tents but the pull-through sites were on the left side of the one-way road so that put RV doors on the road side.  We watched several fifth-wheel and travel trailers try to negotiate the parallel parking style spaces.  After about six to ten tries, they got finally got  parked completely off the road.

The first night, we saw three deer eating something in the fire pit of the site across the road.  The next morning I saw a weasel hot footing it down the middle of the road.  Some people with a tent showed up the second night after 10 p.m. and set about very noisily setting up camp and had two spotlights turned on so they could see what they were doing as well as yelling at each other.  They got mad when Frank yelled at them to quit it because it was after quiet hours started.  Needless to say, we weren’t the only ones who reported them to the park ranger the next morning.  Then they were sited $75 for not securing their foodstuffs.

Friday morning we heard on the radio that a 190-pound black bear had been found on the Going-to-the-Sun road dead after apparently falling off a snow bank.

We discovered we had picked up a mouse either in Washington or Idaho.  It ate a big hole in a tomato I had left on the counter and into the loaf of bread.  So we had to return to West Glacier Grocery to buy a couple of mouse traps.  It paid for its free ride with its life!

As we drove up the Road that day, we kept seeing gushing streams of snow melt just pouring off the side of the mountain – it had actually washed out some of the east bound lane but was passable.

That's NOT snow, it's snow melt racing down to join the river.