This morning we played with Zander a bit before we left.  Here he is pondering the implications of a mobile lifestyle:

Bubbles with B:

Trish took many more photographs of our visit, hopefully they will soon appear on Tricia’s blog.

Continuing North, we passed the stately Capitol dome in Olympia and then skirted the SeaTac metro area to the East, stopping briefly in Mercer Island to stock up on what might be our last opportunity to purchase kosher meat for the next couple of months.

Online sources showed a 45 minute delay at the two I-5 border crossings, so we headed due North to cross at Lynden, Washington, which had a 20 minute delay:

Crossing with our passport cards went fine, but handing in our firearm transit form resulted in an extra 30 minute search of the RV while we had to wait in the customs office.  I would think they would want to more carefully search those who do not declare their firearms, but I’m sure they know what they’re doing.

Welcome to Canada, land of six-dollar diesel!

After a brief stop in Vancouver in which we inadvertently did a bit of damage to the WiFi Antenna with some low trees, we continued on to the Walmart of North Vancouver to overnight, arriving a bit after midnight.  See the trip map for details.

This morning ended the run of atypical Oregon Coast weather with a drizzle that became a drenching rain.  My flying dreams crushed, we packed up and began our trip North to Alaska.

On the way back to Portland, we stopped at the relatively new Tillamook Forestry Center:

The museum shows a great video about the fires in the 1930s through 1950s that burned almost 500,000 acres of what later became the Tillamook State Forest.  An aggressive replanting campaign which had convicts, volunteers, and school children plant 17 million Douglas Fir seedlings throughout the burn area has today yielded a restored woodland.

The museum was very well done with interactive displays and exhibits:

Watch the fake salmon swim!

Magnetic matching works:

The view from the bridge out back is of the Wilson River:

On our way out we climbed the fire tower:

The museum from the fire tower:

Continuing to Portland, we got caught in rush hour traffic on the Sunset Highway.  Rather than crawl up I-5 to Vancouver, we got off onto US-30 and headed up past Sauvie Island to Longview, Washington.  The timber loading area there is amazingly vast, see here.

We are overnighting at the Walmart of Chehalis, Washington.  See the trip map for details.