Heading west....

Sunday, November 29th, dawned clear again....the weather reports for the next few days show partly cloudy skies, with no significant rainfall, or snow predicted! Great! A perfect day to escape the amazing food vortex we found ourselves trapped in the past 5+ days. Originally, we had planned to take I-90 west to I-5 and then take the Bremerton Ferry over to Bainbridge Island and then across the Olympic Peninsula. However, we found out our good friends from our College days would be home afterall. They live near Coupeville, WA on

Whidbey Island. We normally visit them once a year, but hadn't been able to carve out the time the last 18 months, so we were thrilled they would be home. So, we decided to take US Highway 2 west to Everett, WA and north on I-5 to Anacortes, and then south on 20 to Coupeville.

What a great choice! This is a wonderfully maintained highway, although mostly 2 way traffic, it is very driveable, and uncrowded. The terrain was quite varied as we journied westward. We would go from vast farmland, to volcanic range land, then back to farm land, then into mountains, then river valleys, etc. This is a great secondary east/west road to explore such little towns as Coulee City (just south of Grand Coulee Dam), Chelan Lake, and many other quaint towns with large antique stores, and great restaurants.

We stopped in the little town of Cashmere, WA where we ate lunch at a great 50's diner called "Studebaker Diner". The portions were enormous.....we should have split the Bleu Cheese/Bacon Burger, but I ate the whole thing myself. The Diner is attached to this enormous antique mall that must encompass 10,000 square feet. We spent the better part of an hour after our late lunch sifting through the 1,000's of items. I have no purchases to report, but would love to revisit this little town that seems to have several of these large antique malls where locals consign their treasures for sale.

Our original plan was to get over Steven's Pass (4,100' elevation) and then find a suitable RV park to overnight in before finishing our jaunt to Coupeville....unfortunately not much presented itself for consideration, and we ended up driving all the way to Mt. Vernon where we found this charming little RV park called.....what else....Mt. Vernon RV Park.

To the left is a view of the highway just to the west of Steven's Pass....there was a lot of snow piled up in the pass. Glad we came through on a day with no snow, or rain!

Elaine is busy finalizing payroll on E-Labor. Once she is finished we will saunter on down to Coupeville where we will spend a couple days with our friends before heading out to the Olympic Peninsual to explore.

The Newell has performed flawlessly. Her heating systems work hard to keep us more than comfortable. The windshield wipers and washer keeps our view clear. Her waste tanks are massive......we just dumped our tanks for the first time in 9 days, and still had room to spare. We are getting a little rain.....I hope it stops before I have to disconnet our sewer and power. The adventure continues....stayed tuned!