Today was our last nights camping on this trip to Alaska. We took care of some business at the Navy Base getting Ton’s military ID card updated, we also did some shopping at the base. We picked up a collapsible wash bin for plates, and a new mini-rice cooker.
We both really enjoy Whidbey Island and spent the rest of the day visiting some of our favorite places and a new brewery. We ended the day by going to one of Ton’s favorite restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. It is Christophers in Coupeville and it has the best mussels we have ever had. We had our biggest meal of the trip, and we will probably get two more meals out of the leftovers.
We appreciate sunsets so much more when we are in our campers.
We made it back to the campsite just in time to enjoy another spectacular sunset over the Puget sound. Another great day on the trip, hopefully we will have many more in the future.
Today was our 36th anniversary so we decided to take it easy and celebrate in a town we had been intending to visit for a while. We had visited Wenatchee in the past with our sons as part of a hockey trip and remembered it as a small farm town. We had heard that it had boomed since we last visited.
After a lazy start to the day we started the visit by trying to get a spot at Confluence State Park in Wenatchee. They did not have anything available but overflow in the day use parking lot, but the location was good even if the price was not ($25)for what was nothing more than a parking lot. We decided to stay there anyway.
Next stop was Costco to stock up on some final things before we headed up to Canada. We were looking for some good local beer, and some fruit. We found them though it was a little pricier than we expected. So far Wenatchee is not cheap.
The next stop was Pybus Public Market it was billed as the newest attraction in Wenatchee and was indeed nice. The best thing for Ron is that he got to see the last twenty minutes of the Timbers game, and even better, they won.
While at Pybus we were looking for a nice place for dinner when Ton realized that most of the restaurants in town were closed on Sunday. This caught us off guard as we are used to the restaurants in Portland all being open on Sunday. Since we were now committed to the area we had to look at our alternatives.
Watching the Timbers and sampling beer.
Leavenworth was about 20 minutes away and had a lot of open restaurants so we headed there for a German dinner. We also visited a couple of breweries. So thank you for saving the day Leavenworth.
It is still extremely hot and smoky. The high was 96 degrees, and visibility was only a couple of miles. Hopefully we get a break soon.
The plan for the first day was to head from Portland taking Forest Service Road 25 and US-12. FS-25 is a summer only road that goes between Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. We were looking for a new way to head east and this was new to us. FS-25 was a very rough road built just for Tigers. While paved there were areas of very high disrepair that required paying attention to what was going on. The drive was pretty but the views were spoiled by the intense smoke we are currently getting in the Pacific Northwest. A combination of a severe heat wave and very large wild fires in British Columbia made for very poor air quality and visibility.
A very smoky Mt. St. Helens.
In typical Corbin fashion we blew threw Yakima, Ron missed the campground and ended up driving an extra hour until we spotted Wanapum State Park. A little pricey compared to the Forest Service Campground we planned to stay in but having full services is nice as it was in the mid 90’s when we pulled in, so the AC is getting a test run tonight.
From the beginning we intended to visit Grand Coulee Dam. Ton had it on her mini-bucket list. When we woke up in the morning it was raining quite hard and continued the entire time we drove to Grand Coulee. The dam is impressive and is the largest on the Columbia River system. We watched a movie on the construction of the dam and poked around the visitors center for a while before moving on.
The drive out on the Grand Coulee Scenic Highway was very beautiful. Unfortunately with the bad weather there are no pictures. We will definitely be heading that way again in the future when the weather is better.
Looking for a place for the night we decided we needed a full service campground to clean up before heading home the next day. We settled on Wine Country RV park in Prosser Washington. It turned out to be a good choice. As we checked in they told us there were 10 tasting rooms a quarter mile away, and the RV park was having an evening wine tasting.
We headed down to the tasting rooms and sampled some wine, and ended up having a nice dinner. As we were setting up for the night the clouds lifted and we were treated to this sunset.
Today was an easy day. Woke up late, drove over to the Navy Exchange to see if they had any good deals for Christmas, and then headed up the island to our favorite coffee shop in the PNW.
Useless Bay Coffee is located in Langley and features good coffee and excellent baristas. In a nice old building. In addition we tried the Pizza in a waterfront restaurant with a pretty view towards the Cascade Mountains and Seattle. The whole country has been going thru a cold snap and even here it was frosty as you can see from the picture below.
The proverbial frost on the pumpkin.
By the time we finished lunch and our coffee we realized that by the time we drove back to the campsite it would be dark. Sunset today was at 4:30 pm and it was totally dark by 5pm. Ton did get a couple of decent pictures despite the dark.
This will be a very short trip to one of our favorite places. This is our fifth trip to Whidbey Island. We really enjoy the island and one of Ton’s favorite foods is caught fresh off the island. Penn Cove Mussels are awesome and there is one restaurant that we think prepares them better than others. We returned to Christophers for a four course dinner that started off with Penn Cove Mussels and finished with a wonderful desert, and the price is incredibly reasonable. If you get a chance and you are on Whidbey Island make sure you check it out.
Our excellent dessert after our Penn Cove Mussels.
We are camping at one of the very best military campgrounds at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. The sites are right on the sound and fantastic. They recently remodeled it and really got it right except they moved the spots back a bit from the water. In the old days you were within feet of the beach. But it is still outstanding.
A very large drift wood deposit near the campground.
