First Parks

  We left Salem on Saturday afternoon after dragging Sydney away from her friends there.  It was good to spend time with Heather, Jake and the kids.  We headed northwest to check out the Tillamook Cheese factory.  Squeaky cheese and ice cream were certainly the highlights there.  Sydney had the White Chocolate Raspberry and claimed it was excellent.

Sydney enjoying her Tillamook ice cream.

  The self guided tour was cool, except that the place was packed with people.  We were able to make it through the free sample line twice however.

Big cheese blocks.

Cheese in the making.

  From Tillamook we headed north along the coast to Fort Stevens State Park near Astoria, Oregon.  This was our first backing the trailer into a camp spot experience.  Of course it was a packed campground with very narrow spots.  

  We were able to walk to the beach to observe the remains of the ship wreck Peter Iredale a British sailing ship that ran aground there in 1906.  We also walked around the historic military site portion of the park.

The remains of the Peter Iredale.

  From Fort Stevens we went back in time a bit to the winter of 1805 -1806 to Fort Clatsop, the  Lewis and Clark Expedition's winter encampment. It isn't the actual fort, which having been constructed in only two weeks, is long gone.  It is an accurate replica on the actual location and pretty cool.  Sydney tried her hand at journal writing with a quill pen and we watched a flint-lock demonstration.

The gates of Fort Clatsop.

The room of Sacagawea

An original corps member with a flint-lock (so he said).

On Sunday we stayed at the Cape Disappointment State Park which is on the Washington side of the Columbia river.  The camp site was huge and no one was on either side of us, so backing in was a piece of cake.  Cape Disappointment is were the Lewis and Clark Expedition finally reached the Pacific Ocean.  They explored what is now the Long Beach Peninsula, so we were able to walk where they walked and see a replica of the tree that Clark carved his name on.

Sydney standing by Clark's tree on the end of the Discovery Trail.

This was what Clark wrote.

Sydney attempts to start a fire with two sticks at Camp D.

  The beach was nice and the weather was warm.  We stayed just one night and headed north the Elma,WA. to see family.  We are hanging out here until next week.

Hockey with Heather

The first event of the trip was hockey camp at the Sherwood Ice Arena in Portland, Oregon.  We spent the 18th through the 23rd. staying with friends in Salem so that Sydney could do the Planet Hockey camp with her friend Kaylie.  We also took Sydney's friend Dana down with us, so the three girls were able to show those Oregon boys some Icebreaker style hockey.  The camp was good, but I think the girls enjoyed their girl time away from the rink even more.  Go figure.  Anyway, Sydney has her first quarter PE credit finished, and I got to spend the week with my friend Heather!

Last day photo of group B (peewee and bantam).

The best drill of the camp was the bungee.  Sydney is in the gray.

There was lots of scrimmaging. Sydney is in the grey.

Dease Lake Sucks

  We made it through Canada in record time, mostly because we only stopped the first night.  After a night in a motel in Whitehorse we decided to take the Casiar.  Dease Lake seemed to be a good place to stop for gas.  As we pulled into the gas station we realized that we had picked up a nail and our tire was going flat.  We patched the tire, got gas, and had lunch.  As we headed down the road discussing our good fortune of getting a flat at Dease Lake, we passed a friendly Mountie who promptly stopped us for speeding.  He was a little unsure of how fast I was going, or what the speed limit actually was. He was very sure that I needed a $138 ticket.   We ended up driving all night and made it to Prince George about the time the DMV opened so we could pay the ticket.  We then continued on to Washington and arrived in Olympia Friday night.  So, Dease Lake sucks.

Heading South

The truck is very packed.  It didn't seem like so much when we were packing it.

The trip begins.  It was sad to leave the dog.

Sydney has a friend for the first leg of the trip.  They will both be attending Planet Hockey camp in Portland, Oregon with their friend Kayli.  These two seem to be able to entertain each other.

And no trip down the Alcan is conplete without a stop at Fast Eddy's!

And a long, strange trip begins.....

  The house is empty and clean.  Everything we are taking with us is packed and ready to load into the pickup.  The travel trailer is purchased.  We ended up buying it in Washington after all, because it saved us about $6000.  After finding one here that we thought would work for us both for living in and for towing weight, we began searching the web to see if we could get it cheaper.   The amazing thing was, everyone had about the same price listed.  We found a dealer in Kent, Washington who was ready to deal though, and that is where our new home is waiting for us.  It is a little strange spending so much money for something you have only seen pictures of over the internet.

This is the same model as ours, although this is not a picture of ours.

It has a queen size bed in the front, which folds up into the wall and there is a couch underneath.

Sydney will have double wide bunks of her very own.