Gorgeous Sunset at Fidalgo Bay and Wonderful Things to See! (+12 insets!)

(+12 insets!) (this pano shows its magic at full size!) :) (Oh, and yeah...think War and Peace...a cup of coffee is in order! :D)

Trip Talk: Are We There Yet? Vancouver Island Isn’t Down the Street! And What’s with All the Truck Problems?!!

The ferry from Washington to Vancouver Island is not that far away—just 8.5 hours. But that’s if you’re driving a car—not a truck with a 30-foot trailer behind it. Our speed is close to that of a car, but pulling a trailer is stressful, something which builds up over time even if there haven’t been any problems. Therefore, we try not to drive more than 4 hours at a time if we can help it. We’ve actually increased our driving time a lot since we began our RV travels. The first couple of trips were just an hour away from home. On our third trip, we drove up and down the Oregon Coast and doubled the driving time between camp grounds to a couple of hours. During that trip we gradually increased the drive times to a maximum of three hours. Each trip we’ve been able to deal with longer drives but there’s definitely a limit. As badly as we wanted to get to Vancouver Island to get our trip officially started, we both knew we’d need to stay overnight on the way up (and back again).

That being said, we didn’t care about the accommodations and that meant we’d be staying in RV “parking lots”. Many places we’ve seen really are nothing more than gravel parking spots with hookups for sewer, water and electricity. No grass, no plants, no picnic table…NADA! (See Inset 12 for an example!) Oddly enough, many of these places aren’t even cheap because they are located in a city or other important thoroughfare, but we think it’s outrageous to be so overcharged for a crappy site.

More amazing is that there are a lot of people who choose to live full-time at these places. Noisy, ugly, bleak, crowded…it seems to me that if I were going to live full-time at an RV park, it would need to be really nice for me to bother. However, perhaps the price is the issue—RV parks have attractive offers to live there full-time, in turn giving the park owners a steady income.

On our first night heading towards Canada we stayed at a place called Riverside RV Resort in the forgettable town of Canby. It was nothing special but served its purpose just fine.

Truck Problems
While we were at Riverside our first vehicle issue happened. When Steve was disconnecting the truck from the trailer, the plug that connects the truck’s electricity to the trailer was ripped out and needed to be replaced. And then, the repair which should have taken only a couple of hours turned out to be six hours of frustration and anxiety. However, in the end Steve was successful and the replacement plug was much better than the original junky one. It’s only too bad it happened in the first place.

The next day we left for Fidalgo Bay Resort, located minutes away from the Washington Ferry which would take us to Vancouver Island.

It was a very warm summer day and there was a lot of stop and go traffic on the busy freeway that took us north past both Portland and then Seattle. By the time we hit the rush-hour traffic of Seattle, we began getting concerned comments from people driving by. “Pull over! Your tire is smoking!”

!!! WHAT WHAT WHAT?!!!!! Horrified, Steve and I used our mirrors to frantically check the tires on each side but we couldn’t see what people were so freaked out about. Which tires?!!! The truck?! The trailer?! Both?! And, as badly as we wanted to pull over and jump out to see what was going on, there was no shoulder to pull off onto. Steve and I were beside ourselves with worry.

The stop and go traffic in the heat was so infuriating because we were stuck without any way to fix or even assess the situation. The next offramp was many miles down the road so all we could do is creep forward until we found a wide-enough shoulder to pull off onto. Cars continued to beep at us, roll their windows down and inform us that we had a problem. That didn’t help, and nobody answered our query, “WHICH TIRE???!!” The most we got were fingers pointed at our rig…could have been either the truck or the trailer, we just didn’t know.

After what seemed like eternity, a wide shoulder presented itself and Steve pulled off as far over as possible. We both know how deadly it can be when drivers get out of their cars on a shoulder so Steve was very cautious as he left the truck and took a look at the tires.

The trailer’s wheels were fine, and so were the wheels on the truck’s driver side. But looking at the wheels on the passenger side, Steve saw some smoke coming out from the rear one. What was going on????!!!

Oh, And About the Truck…
What I haven’t mentioned was that we got our truck totally serviced after we got back from our Central Oregon trip. That was the trip where we lost our truck’s transmission and had it rebuilt while we stayed at L.L. Stub Stewart State Park for ten days. Both Steve and I felt the same way though: when we got back home, the truck was going into the shop for a full service overhaul because we did NOT want to be on Vancouver Island with a disabled truck!

Happily, we were able to get the servicing done but the only problem was that we got the truck back a mere couple of days before we were set to leave on our trip to Canada. That meant that Steve didn’t get to take the truck out to make sure all was well.

Back to our Freakout Truck Session
So Steve calls our mechanic and Huck answered immediately. He listened carefully as Steve described the problem we were having and then Huck explained what he figured was going on. After the two of them talked for a while, with Steve examining the wheel and relaying information to Huck, I could tell that Steve was much more relaxed and understood what was going on.

Apparently the replaced bearings were faulty and some of the oil used to pack them was seeping out onto the center disk, which was so hot from the traffic that the oil began to smoke. Huck told Steve that the wheel would actually be ok and all Steve needed to do was monitor the situation and wipe off any oil that appeared. The problem would fix itself most likely and once we returned, Huck would replace the bearings just to make sure all was well.

And that’s exactly what happened. We checked the wheel regularly throughout the trip and wiped off any oil that we found. Within a day or two no more oil appeared and we were able to relax, knowing the truck was ok. Whew. We sure do hate problems with our rig but the happy ending to this story was that we arrived at Fidalgo Bay Resort (*NOT* a parking lot!!) as the sun was dropping below the horizon, just in time for us to park our rig and take pictures of the breathtaking view.

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Today’s Pictures
The main picture today is a view of the magnificent sunset that totally took our breaths away. Other pictures in this presentation include more sunset images and a walk on the beach the next morning before we left for the ferry.

Inset 1: When Steve and I were on our trip, I posted another picture of the sunset and I thought it should be reposted in this presentation.

Inset 2: This is a very wide panorama of the whole bay! It was a jaw-dropping sight and we felt very fortunate to stand in such a spot and think about how beautiful the world is.

Inset 3: Look at this lovely trio!! Waking up in Fidalgo Bay, I popped outside and took a walk along the shore. It gave me the chance to watch a flock of Canada Geese having seaweed for breakfast! I got so many nice pictures of them that I can't resist sharing a few!

Inset 4: Another beautiful Canada goose. I know we've all seen plenty of these common birds but you know, I just don't get tired of how pretty they are.

Inset 5: I love this group picture because they are all busy doing their thing, including wolfing down seaweed! :) After Steve and I had our breakfast, we came out to the beach together but by that time the geese had finished their munching and made their way out into the bay to another favored location.

Inset 6: The night before, Steve and I couldn't help noticing the huge refinery across the bay, complete with billowing steam. We thought it was very cool-looking but wow, what an opposite to the natural beauty that we were experiencing on the other side! I learned that there are actually two refineries in the area which are part of the Puget Sound Refinery--one is the Texaco Refinery and the other is the Shell Refinery. Those of you who enjoy historical details will love this link to the building of these refineries in the 1960's.

Inset 7: This monstrous oil tanker sat on the other side of the bay as well and I couldn't resist looking it up, since I could read its name, "Polar Discovery." Did you know that huge ships are tracked and logged, with updates about locations, cargo, weight and the like? This Google link will bring you to a list of pages mentioning the Polar Discovery; clicking on one will give you more detailed information and sometimes a picture of the vessel. The reason this is cool is that these massive ships are among our world's "movers and shakers." They are one of the countless chess pieces behind the scenes which are individually significant to country economies.

Inset 8: The calm waters of Fidalgo Bay were perfect for morning kayaking or even paddle-boating! This man and his wife enjoyed some brisk exercise, though they seemed a bit on the stern side to me! :D

Inset 9: These gorgeous gladiolus were growing in a planter next to the park's boat launch and I just had to immortalize them…what colors!!

Inset 10: This row of RVs is right along the Fidalgo Bay's edge. How lucky to get a reservation which afforded such a view. (Even though the space between each rig is almost nothing!) We learned a bit of etiquette the night we arrived: You Must Not Walk Between RV's To Get To The Bay. You Must Use The Designated Path. Or Else. LOL, we didn't realize that people can be so territorial about their temporary RV site! At one point we walked between two RVs to get to the road where our RV was and suddenly a woman magically appeared to stand, extremely agitated, right in front of us. Steve and I were quite surprised as we watched her pull her shirt down with pomp and stand at full height, seemingly in a protective stance. "HELLO!" said Steve. *GLARE* from the woman. "Well, have a nice day!" added Steve. *HUFF-PUFF-GLARE* from the woman. YOIKS. Well...as we pushed around her rigid form, we learned something about stepping on people's toes and where not to walk!

Inset 11: Here's a picture of our rig at Fidalgo Bay. Even though we weren't at the water's edge, we didn't care, it was mere seconds from our RV to walk out to the water's edge, how cool is that?! :)

Inset 12: I added the picture of our rig at Riverside RV "Resort" (which is a strange way to spell "PARKING LOT") so you can see how close the sites are to each other.:D At least this place had gravel instead of uneven dirt!

Pam, I wonder if you've ever used a paddle boat? I've never tried one myself but they do look like a lot of fun, don't they? We visited so many places along our journey which would have been perfect for these boats but still, they wouldn't really make sense because it would be very hard to take something like that with us, let alone two of them. We are going to try to get a boat of some kind at some point. For now, it's all fun to think about! Hope you have a nice day my dear! *big hugs from southern Oregon*

Explored on 9/16/19; highest placement #5.