It’s quite nice to be in real-life mode, rather than vacation mode. Vacation mode, for us, means an almost non-stop schedule of activities, driven by a short-term visit to an area and a desire to see and do everything possible in the time we have. That’s exciting, but also a bit tiring. Settling here for a month is allowing us to relax into more of what I call “real life” mode. We are still exploring, but at a slower pace. It allows for just chill time – time to read, watch movies, and just enjoy our camping spot. It’s nice, like a vacation from vacation mode!

This area of far northwest Washington state offers quite a lot to do. I already posted about our whale watching tour, which was one of my favorite activities so far on this full time RV journey.  I’d do that again!

One of Jeff’s goals on our journey has been to visit Whistler ski resort north of Vancouver, which is touted as one of the best downhill mountain bike parks in the world. It was too far for a day trip, so he scheduled a quick overnight journey. Because of Pumpkin kitty, I am loath to leave overnight, plus I needed to work, so I stayed behind. It allowed me to catch up on some household chores, plus do my consulting work.  He’ll have to post about his adventure sometime, but he is much better at adventuring than posting! Here’s a couple photos though.

We hopped the motorcycle one day and made the 2.5 hour trek eastward to the North Cascades National Park. It is beautiful, but largely inaccessible except by foot. One major road takes you east-west through the park, along rivers and overlooks to glaciated peaks and turquoise lakes. The glacier river is dammed in three places, forming the beautiful lakes, controlling flooding, and generating clean power for the Seattle area. The lowest power plant offered a self-guided tour* and garden-like paths along the river.  The park was lovely, but unless you’re up for a major backpack trip or want to play on the lakes, there’s not so much to do.

Another day we journeyed up to the (closer) Mount Baker, whose snow-frosted peak is visible from our campground. A ski resort in winter, the mountain gets an immense amount of snow, which was still quite evident during our visit. In fact, several of the hikes we wanted to do in the higher elevations were still completely snow covered. I guess you need to visit in late August in order to really do much hiking – that, or wear snow gear! The huge mounds of melting snow formed interesting snow caves and shapes.

More on our explorations to come …

* Side note:  On the self-guide power plant tour, the exhibit included quite a funny statement about engineers. We took a photo, but here’s the text if you can’t read it:

“An ENGINEER is one who passes as an expert on the strength of being able to turn out with prolific fortitude, strings of incomprehensible formulae calculated with micromatic precision from extremely vague assumptions which are based on debatable figures acquired from inconclusive tests and quite incomplete experiments carried out with instruments of problematic accuracy by persons of doubtful reliability and of rather dubious mentality with the particular anticipation of disconcerting and annoying everyone outside of their own fraternity.”

<giggle>