Vancouver

We're using AirBnB to reserve a room in Yaletown, Vancouver.  Our host is a good communicator and someone greets us at the secure lobby. It's a wonderful neighborhood and a great view from the 18th floor.  The flat, however, leaves a little to be desired.  Mattress on the stained carped and mattress springs sticking me in the back.  That's what I get for ordering by price and picking the first one.  We get a perfect dinner at the Cactus Club Cafe (ceviche, fish tacos and Kobe style meatballs on fettuccine. Delicious.

Capping the night with a stroll around the waterfront of Yaletown, we spot malia canoes stroking madly to the yell of the cockswain.

Aquabuses ferry passengers between a number of stops along the shoreline connecting to metro and bus stations.

We get the car oiled, dump a lot of travelling gear into a storage locker, both of us get our hair trimmed and it's to bed by 10:00 PM.

Oh, Canada!

It's a mad dash north across the border to Canada.  We want to accomplish five errands in Vancouver this afternoon. The border guard is curt, polite and decisive.  You have a place to stay? No guns? You're in.

Lake Quinault

We canoe around the entire perimeter of Lake Quinault on the Olympic Peninsula.  That's about 12 miles.  Since the lake gets 131" of rain each year, you will not be surprised to know that we got rained upon.  This lake lies within the Quinault Indian Reservation.  We had to buy a license to use the lake - with our canoe - from the Indians!  What gives?  One things for sure... we're going to bed early tonight.

Laundry Day

When you're on the road this long there are administrative tasks...

Elk!

We stopped at every roadside attraction sporting signs of elk all the way up from California. But no dice.  Finally today, we see a herd of 20 elk in the wild.  We spot them across the Hoh River that we've followed from the coast up into the deep mountain valleys of the Olympic Peninsula.  Gorgeous beasts with a patriarch overseeing the herd warily watch a gaggle of tourists snapping photos on the other side of the rushing snow melt.

Fancy Lodgings

We've worked long and hard to get reservations at the Lake Quinault Lodge in the middle of the Olympic Peninsula.  It's a beautifully maintained throwback to the early 1900's maintained by the National Park Service.  We snag a room and reservations for a dinner with a view.  Afterward, I proceed to whip Paula at a game of pool in the billiard room.  Then she schools me in ping pong. Kids watch enthusiastically.  We would have really given them a show but we're dressed for dinner.

Twilight, meet J. R. R. Tolkien

We're in the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympia National Park in Washington State.  This is very near the town of Forks where the Twilight novels are set.  But it looks like a dark forest far from the Shire where the Hobbits would have to venture on their way to Mordor.  What a place of awesome splendor, beauty, silence and mosquitoes.  We keep moving so they can't alight.  Of course the clouds spit.  In fact, they pour.  It would be a rare day indeed where it did not rain here. A hot coffee is calling my name.