Current Location: Gig Harbor RV Resort, Gig Harbor, Washington

This morning we were up early, awakened by the sound of birds arguing on the roof of the trailer. We’re trying to get used to the longer days up north. 5:45 AM and the sun was already above the horizon and shining brightly, after having watched the sunset colors the night before at nearly 10:00 PM.

As we were loading things in the truck and getting ready to pull it around to hitch up, Malcolm noticed several scratches in the glass on the outside. We aren’t sure how they got there, but they weren’t there yesterday. They’re fairly visible when the sun is shining towards the window and one of them runs right down the center of the driver’s side right where you look out the window when you are driving. We may end up replacing a windshield while in Washington.

We got all hooked up and headed out about 7:30 AM, determined to get as much distance in today as we could. That would make the trip tomorrow much shorter on into Gig Harbor. As you can see by our “current location”, we went ahead and drove the whole way in today – 587 miles.

We stopped briefly at the top of the pass between Montana and Idaho to check out the scenery and stretch legs. Here area a couple of pictures from that stop.

Welcome to Idaho

Looking into Idaho

Looking back on Montana

Since we were driving across the panhandle of Idaho, it didn’t take long to get to Washington state. Here are some random pictures from Washington.

Welcome to Washington

Columbia River

Wind farm in Washington

Mountains in Washington

After a stop at a rest area in Washington, we figured that it was a little over 4 hours to Seattle from the place we were and it was only about 1:00 PM. Checking the map app to see how to get to Gig Harbor without getting tangled in Friday afternoon rush hour in Seattle, Malcolm called our son-in-law, Cole, to verify that taking Washington 18 cross-country would be a viable alternative to heading into Seattle and catching I-5 south.

Malcolm then called the campground to see if we could show up a day early. After checking around for available spots, they said we could come on in, but might have to move to our reserved spot tomorrow. We agreed that wouldn’t be a problem and headed on into town.

As we got onto I-5 near Tacoma, traffic ground to a halt and crawled for several miles. We hopped off and filled up the truck at a Love’s truck stop. Malcolm did the fuel chores while Val and David grabbed dinner to go from the Subway in the building. We ate sandwiches as we traveled the rest of the way to the campground.

Our site at Gig Harbor RV Resort

Though the campground office was closed, they hang out envelopes for those arriving late to grab and park. We grabbed ours and pulled through our site, doing a quick setup (unhitching, leveling, run out the slides, hook up the power, turn on the A/C and outside light). Once set up, we hopped back in the truck and headed out to Fox Island to visit our family, who is camping out there. Since it was getting close to bedtime for the grandchildren, we didn’t stay very long. We headed back to the trailer and plopped down for the night.

David and Violet

Here are today’s license plate finds – 23 of 51.

Today’s license plates