It was raining this morning, and we realized that we hadn't gotten rain during this entire trip. After a five-night stay without hook-ups, we were happy to report that our lithium battery and solar panels were doing great! We scoped out our options for leaving our forest service campground, and wanted to turn left out of our site to avoid the pot holes in the turn-around section to the right. But we found that the left turn was too tight. Before we knew it, we were wedged between some big rocks and big trees and couldn't go forward or backward. The trailer was basically perpendicular to the road instead of on the road. That's never happened before! Our campground host showed up to give us some advice, but she had never seen that happen before either. We forgot to take a picture of our bind at its worst because we honestly didn't know how we were going to get out of this mess. The picture below was taken later after the disaster was averted.
After trying every other maneuver, we had to unhitch the trailer from the pickup and put the roller wheel on its tongue. Then Mark built a ramp out of our leveling blocks so he could ramp the pickup over the rocks in front of us. That left the trailer straddling the road, with a tree behind it and a rock in front of it. With the pickup out of the way, we rolled the trailer sideways. With enough tugging and rolling, we got the trailer back straight on the road, and could then rehitch it to the pickup. We were so glad that we were now able to go down that potholed campground road to leave. But that was a good thirty minute delay to our morning.
The campground host complimented us for not yelling at each other during such a stressful experience. We've been hanging out together for more than 45 years, and we can honestly say that we haven't seen the kind of stress that would necessitate yelling at each other. That's never happened before!
After that rough start, we were driving west towards the coast, then north over the Columbia River. That brought us into Washington, the eighth state of this summer adventure. We thought the speed limits were interesting in this new state. Cars can drive 70 miles per hour, trucks can only drive 60 miles per hour, and vehicles pulling trailers are limited to 55 miles per hour. We actually like the slower speed limit, but it was an interesting mix of speeds on a highway. We also found gas for $4.49 per gallon--almost as high as California!
We stopped at a Walmart for supplies, then dumped our tanks at a Washington rest stop on I-5. On this day's drive we passed lumber saw mills, logging trucks, paper mills, and a port with stacks of logs that ran for miles. It looked like the economy of southern Washington was fueled by the trees that surrounded us. It was cloudy and overcast, so we didn't get the blue sky views as we traveled along the Columbia River. Our road hugged the north edge of this big river until we reached the town of Cathlamet. We didn't know how to pronounce the town name, and a local corrected us. We learned to say it like "cath-LAMB-et".
It was still raining when we had to cross the big bridge that spanned part of the Columbia River.
We must point out that the bridge crossed only part of the river, because we were heading to the island in the middle of the Columbia River. We were spending a little island time here in southern Washington on Puget Island.
If we had approached from the south, we would have loaded the pickup and trailer onto the ferry to get to the island. It's a $6 trip to ride the ferry between Oregon and Washington to get to Puget Island. It's never happened that we camped on an island in the middle of a river before.
We settled into our spot beside a Boondocker's Welcome home on the island. Julie, our host, apologized that we had to back into our spot while it was raining. But she was so happy to see the moisture. They hadn't gotten any rain for a month, and she couldn't remember such a long time between rains happening before.
It was fun to meet one of the locals. Julie traveled for three years in her RV, staying at many Boondocker Welcome sites. Now that she bought a house on Puget Island, she made a level camping spot so she could welcome boondockers like us. We loved our stay on Puget Island! Julie had fruit trees in her backyard, and the deer arrived daily to see if any more apples had fallen off the trees.
As we drove around the island, we saw more of the white-tailed deer and their fawns. We would find that this was the only place in the Pacific Northwest that the deer had white-tails. All the other deer we have been seeing were black-tailed.
Nine hundred people live on Puget Island, but we're pretty sure they were out-numbered by the deer.
We also saw lots of osprey. Living on an island means they were surrounded by good fishing options on all sides.
The people were also outnumbered by the blackberry bushes. They were everywhere, and Denisa loved picking and eating from the bushes in public areas.
These were some of the largest blackberries we have ever seen, which was remarkable for bushes that sprout and grow so easily in the wild.
We started this day with the trailer and pickup in a bind, in a way that had never happened before. We had to drive in the rain, and that hadn't happened before on this trip. But traveling like this also allows us to see places and people that we've never experienced before. So we'll take a few bad experiences in exchange for the opportunity to live the new adventures--that have never happened before.
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