A road trip to Washington & Oregon

Friday July 9, 2010

The main reason for this trip was to attend the Arlington fly-in, but since I'm not working we were free as birds. The only constraint was money.

Original proposed route
(wound up being very different)

We decided to include the Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth on this trip. Our very first trip together was to Leavenworth, 14 or 15 years ago. From there we planned to head north to Osoyoos in BC, then drive back west through Canada. But that didn't happen. Instead, we drove west through Washington via the Cascade loop, and then south to Oregon.

We've been on this ferry route between Sidney and Anacortes before so I won't spend a lot of time on it. I wish I'd taken a picture of one of the very rusty Washington State ferries passing by because it was a quite a sight - they don't look well maintained at all.

Here we pass Spieden Island, an unusually dry and barren island in the San Juans, privately owned by a sunglass billionaire.

We had to chuckle when a passenger discovered, as the ferry sailed past San Juan Island, that he wasn't going to that island after all. He was so annoyed that he wanted to speak to the captain, as if it wasn't his own fault that he failed to check the schedule.

Most of the San Juans look more like this, similar to our Gulf Islands.

Our ferry cruised around aimlessly waiting for a place to dock. We should have been at our hotel by mid-afternoon. Instead, it was suppertime. We were starving by then since there isn't much to eat on the Washington State ferries other than hotdogs, popcorn and baked goods. It would have been smart to take our own food.

We checked into a Holiday Inn Express in Marysville, which is just a few miles (miles not kilometres in the US) south of Arlington. I hadn't stayed in a Holiday Inn in decades so was not sure what to expect. We were pleasantly surprised. Staff were friendly and efficient, the room was just fine and do-it-yourself breakfasts are included at the Express hotels.

Top and bottom left: Our room was well equipped with a small fridge, microwave, coffee maker, desk, iron, sitting area. No in-room safe though.

Top right: Glenn was happy to see the sink in the bathroom like this, rather than outside of it as is the case at some hotels. I was surprised that there was no tub, only a shower in this room.

Bottom right: Breakfast room off lobby. Thumbs up for lots of bananas always being available. Glenn gets cramps if he doesn't have one every day. Here is a curious thing - there were biscuits, hot scrambled eggs, sausage paddies and then some liquid stuff that we couldn't identify. I figured it was some sort of porridge but later we saw this exact same thing in another hotel and found out it was gravy (for the biscuits maybe). We concluded it must be an American thing, just like salt-water taffy seems to be more popular in the States. Another difference between Canada and the US is that their gas is much cheaper.