Hurricane Ridge

This is on Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. The wild flowers were sensational my pictures do not do them justice.

Sand Sculptures from Port Angeles

These are the Sand sculptures from Port Angeles. These folks were allowed 35 hours over 3 days to complete them. The first picture represents the internet. The theme was great inventions and she is wired!! This was my favorite.

Victoria pics

The top picture is the Butcharts residence. The bottom is the Hotel in Victoria.
Cheers!
Lois

Butchart Gardens

These are from Butchart Gardens. The top one was a stone Quarry. Mrs Butcharts husband owned a portland cement company.

Fri July 25
We left Lacy Fri morning and traveled Rt 101 north to the Olympic Peninsula, to our next stopover at an escapee’s park. We signed in for 7 days and already are wishing we had more time.
26th
Today we started west along the upper edge of the peninsula by The Strait of Juan De Fuca, stopping at Squim for a wood carving festival and Port Angeles for a wonderful sand carving competition. The artists came from quite a distance to compete. I just read that the winner is from St Louis MO. The theme of the competition was Great Inventions, and he won for Music. I’ll include some pictures, as they are incredible. After the festivals we took the 17 mile drive up into the mountains of Olympic National Park. The mountains were snow covered and the wild flowers carpeted the slopes. Pictures will follow!!
27th
Today it is raining and we are resting. Decided to go to give some money back to the Indians, succeeded!
28th
Today we planned to take the ferry to Victoria BC. We got a slightly late start but I thought we’d just catch a later one. WRONG! After getting up at the crack of dawn and speeding for an hour we had to change our plans so we headed even farther West to the rain forest where we hiked for 3 hours through a lush forest with moss and large ferns. We were supposed to see the ocean at the end of the hike but I didn’t make it. We were so close I could hear it but knowing I had to hike all the way back I decided I had gone far enough! The forest was just beautiful! After that we traveled through an Indian reservation to Cape Hattery, the Northern most point on the lower 48. It was a long day and we both went straight to bed after the long ride home, because tomorrow it’s up at dawn to catch that ferry!!
July 29th
Well we made it, but it’s raining! We decided to go for it anyway and the hour and ½ ferry ride was very nice. The boat is large enough to carry motorhomes and lots of cars plus 1000 people. We arrived in Victoria around 9:30 and toured the Government buildings. Everyone was very friendly and the Capitol buildings are lavish. From there we walked to the Empress Hotel to check it out. It was designed by the same architect as the parliament buildings. The plan was to have a high tea there in the afternoon, it looked lovely but first we wanted to see Butchart Gardens. They were 40 minutes from the center of town by bus. They were created by Jennie Butchart to beautify her husbands Quarry business in 1904. The house was lavish and the gardens just spectacular. Twylah, you don’t know how many times we mentioned you while we toured them. More pictures will follow.
Wed 30th
Today I really appreciate my washer and drier!!

Friday-Friday July 18-25th
Hello from Lacy Washington,
We have been hanging out in an Airstream park close to Olympia Washington. We came down I-5 past Seattle and the traffic was horrific, we needed some time to veg out. We have been taking day trips around the area. Our first one was to Mount Rainier, about 55 miles from here. The mountain stands alone and is glacier covered. You travel thru large old growth trees, up, up, up, to Paradise.
Sunday we went to downtown Olympia to the farmers market. It is located by the Blood inlet, with a nice marina to view. There were lots of fresh vegetables and fruit and flowers.
The next day was overcast so we decided to go into Olympia and take a guided tour of the Capitol building. It is beautiful, mostly all marble, with the largest collection of Tiffany lighting in the world. From there we only had to go about one mile to view Tumwater falls in a lovely downtown park, with a walk along the river.
Tue and Wed were catch up days. We had some insurance issues to take care of as our motor home ins. was due and we needed to change carriers to save some $$$. Also our windshield had a crack in it and we needed to get that fixed before we changed carriers.
It’s all taken care of now so today we ventured out again, this time north to Tacoma where we found the mall, the downtown, and a fabulous town park, Point Defiance. It has a beautiful garden with the most beautiful hydrangeas I have ever seen, also lots of roses, begonias, and fuchsias. A marina, zoo and beach with a 5 mile scenic drive along Puget Sound. If we have time we go back to Tacoma, as there were 3 museums we would like to tour.
Tomorrow Fri., we leave Lacy and head over to The Olympic Peninsula where we will tour the coast and go to Victoria. We will come back here for the potlatch and Salmon Rally Aug 2
Hope all is well with you .

More pictures from Tacoma.

These pictures are from point Defiance park in Tacoma

These are some pictures of the Stampede where we had a wonderful time watching the cowboys. The show on Sunday night was one of the best we have ever seen. It started with Chuckwagon races. !
Sunday July 13,
Today was the last day of the stampede. We left the campground around 4, our show started at 8, and what a show it was. It started out with Chuck wagon races. The wagons were pulled by 4 thorough bred horses, and followed by 4 riders and they had to do a figure 8 around barrels then race around the track. It was quite exciting, they were competing for 100,000 dollars. After the races the show began and we have never seen anything like it. It was a combination of Broadway, Circt- olay, and vaudeville with some motorcycle jumping thrown in, ending with fireworks. It lasted until 12:15 and we could have watched all night, it was so good!! The rally lasted until Tuesday, with a jazz band Mon. and a cowboy singer and poet Tue. night.
Wednesday morning we pulled out and headed north thru Banff National Park. We intended to go on North thru Jasper but made a misguided turn and decided to just keep going west thru Canada’s Glacier National Park and Mt Revelstoke NP. There were majestic mountains and river valleys everywhere, we had to stop once for Big Horn Sheep to cross the road, we stopped at Kamloops for the night.
Thursday July 17, 2008
Today we crossed into the Pacific Time zone and we are now 3 hours behind most of you. In addition to the 3 hours it also stays light up here for about an hour extra. I really don’t mind at all as I tend to be a nighttime person and my body didn’t have any trouble adjusting to sleeping in longer. My only trouble is Norm who isn’t a night person isn’t particularly sympathetic to my late sleeping! Today we came from Kamloops to Chilliwack via Rt 1. Again we followed beautiful rivers and Mountains. We stopped at Hells gate to take a tram to the bottom of the canyon but couldn’t find a parking spot to accommodate our motor home so we went on down the road a little and found a road that we could hike down on, We all started down but I realized we were going a long way DOWN so I started back up before Norm and Mickey. It’s the narrowest spot on the Fraser River where they had to construct fish ways for the salmon, and there is a suspension bridge crossing the river there, I’m not sure why. We went exploring for a hot springs outside of Chilliwack this afternoon. It was at a beautiful location on Harrison Lake, but a resort owns it now and they have made several swimming pools with different temperatures. We didn’t go in but it was a beautiful drive and lake. The surrounding mountains are known as Sasquatch country because dozens of sightings of the apelike creature, twice the size of man.
I'll follow with a few more pictures. Lois

Just more pictures of the stampeed

7-12-08
Today was our first day at the Stampeed. We took the Rapid Transit into Calgary because the parking is difficult. We saw bareback riding, lots of bucking horses, and bulls.
The Cowgirls did barrel racing and the kids were put in teams of 3 and tried to catch and get one of their team on the wild pony. It was very difficult!! The show lasted about 3 1/2 hours, and was great The grounds are huge with lots of venues. Before the main show we took in a dog agility show. They started with a Jack Russel and a Papieon (the Jack won, but I think Mickey could have beat him, )and worked up thru the larger breeds.
We also went to the Indian village. The costumes are colorful and the dances entertaining.
The hoop dancer in the bottom picture was amaizing. We also went to many animal barns and saw the Clidesdales. Some of it is like a huge Bloomsburg fair.
Tomorrow we go back for the last day for the chuck wagon races and fireworks.