Wed 07 – Thu 08 Aug 2019
Eight months ago, when exploring Costa Rica in the very first week of our most recent world travels, we met a family from Seattle with two girls similar ages to ours. We walked with Kurt and his family and chatted for maybe half an hour, then went our separate ways. As we parted, they kindly said (as people do) that we should look them up if passing their neck of the woods during our travels. We responded (as people do) that we just might do that.
I suppose that should have been an end to it. But, we being the sort of people who follow through when we say we might do something, and them being the sort of people who mean it when they make an offer, we had exchanged e-mails a few weeks ago to arrange to hook up when we came through Seattle. They were the most amazingly welcoming family, showing us around their area and correcting our hitherto poor impressions of Seattle, camping with us and even inviting us into their home, and you’ll read all about that in the next blog. But, first, we had to get to the Seattle area from Newfoundland via two long days of travel by aeroplane, bus and hire car.
We spent most of Wednesday flying from Newfoundland’s little Deer Lake airport to Toronto then on to Vancouver, including a time zone change of a few hours. We rightly predicted that no food would be provided on the flights, but, on this occasion, knowing that we wouldn’t be changing country until tomorrow so there would be no customs issues with our food supplies, we had stocked up in Deer Lake with some snack-based provisions for the flight.
During the flight, Poppy asked me, “How much grey do you get in your hair before you die?”
What an odd question. I looked at her closely, saw she was serious, took a deep breath, and began to explain, “Now, Poppy. When you die doesn’t depend on how much grey you have in your hair...”
Sensing that I was about to embark on one of my long, scientific lectures, Poppy burst in quickly, “No, Mummy. I mean how much grey do you get in your hair before you DYE it?” Oh.
On arrival in Vancouver, we took a free shuttle bus to a cheap hotel that we’d pre-booked in the Richmond area near the airport. The hotel was perfectly pleasant with a friendly atmosphere, good staff, nice room and super-comfy beds. But, with the time zone change and bitty snack meals on Wednesday, I awoke hungry in the very early hours of Thursday. There was nothing spare to eat, so I forced myself back to bed, and we all got up between 6 and 6:30 a.m.
We continued holding on for breakfast until 8 a.m. as it was another day of limited eating opportunities and needing to eke out our last meagre rations: we wanted to do justice to the inclusive breakfast and make sure that it would keep us going for as long as possible. We looked out of the hotel window – it was grim outside. After inspiring views every day in beautiful, near-deserted Newfoundland, this was a view of unrelenting concrete in every direction and the underside of a light railway. We listened to some Turkish music on the TV in our room and made a cup of coffee in the filter machine.
Eventually, 8 o’clock came and, after a well-organised, filling breakfast, we packed up our things and trudged two blocks with all our luggage to catch a bus to take us from Vancouver to Seattle airport, whence we had a hire car booked. It was a 4½ hour bus journey, including a land border crossing from Canada into the USA at Blaine in Washington State, the girls’ first land border crossing. Exactly as the last time we entered the USA (in Florida in February near the end of the longest federal shutdown in USA history, when all non-essential Government services had been stopped and essential staff, like those at border control, had to continue working without pay), the passport, visa and customs staff were incredibly jolly. Maybe it's an attempt to make overseas visitors feel more welcome than Trump would have us believe.
We got chatting with some interesting travellers as we waited around at various points during the bus journey, notably, a naturalised USA citizen originally from the Philippines, planning to return there to live out the remainder of his life after nearly 40 years away (he was 66), and a Dutch family with two children who were making a similar, one-way Canada/USA trip to us, but across 3 weeks rather than our 5.
The bus dropped us off at Seattle airport about 40 minutes late. On our last visit to Seattle, 18 years ago, we had an awful experience both of the city and in trying to pick up our hire car. But, in a marked break from tradition, the hire car collection went seamlessly, we weren’t coerced into paying any additional, unexpected fees, and the car, a Nissan Sentra, looked just perfect for our upcoming three weeks of camping. Adding a second driver was very expensive, so we limited it to the one driver (Dave) and would need to pace the amount of driving accordingly.
We set off in the car, heading for Bainbridge Island, our destination for the night. Rather than face a journey into downtown Seattle (yikes!) to catch a car ferry straight over to Bainbridge Island, we decided to head down and round Puget Sound by road, across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge westbound (no tolls westbound, only eastbound) and then head north again up the west side of the Sound. It was a bit further than we’d realised (84 miles), but should still be doable in a couple of hours on a clear run.
But it wasn’t a clear run. The traffic was heavy and (after leaving the airport late, as the bus had dropped us late) we got stuck in traffic jams most of the way, with some roadworks thrown in for good measure and a complicated turn-off that we missed and then couldn’t correct for miles owing to various restricted motorway junctions. The journey (excluding stops) ended up taking nearer 4 hours than 2 hours.
It is worth recounting the start of our journey. We’d just left the airport and almost immediately joined our first traffic jam. There was a faster-flowing lane of traffic labelled ‘HOV’ (High Occupancy Vehicle – for which, amazingly, just 2 people constitutes ‘high occupancy’) and we were about to move across into it. But, at that moment, the signage changed from ‘HOV’ to ‘Car Pool’. Were we a car pool? Isn’t that when adults lift-share for work, etc., thus leaving a car at home when otherwise two cars might be travelling instead of one? We were just a family travelling together, so of course we’d be in one car: hardly a car pool, just a family. We found out later that we did count, but, at the time, uncertain, we dare not risk it, so sat it out in the big traffic jam.
Dave decided to make use of this time in stationary traffic to check out a few of the controls inside the car. He pressed an innocuous-looking button, wondering what it was for. We all jumped out of our skins as it loudly sounded the horn. Dave gestured apologetically to the car driver in front so that they wouldn’t think the horn blast was aimed at them, then tried a second button. It sounded the horn. Rather embarrassed, Dave and now I made further pacifying gestures towards the increasingly disconcerted driver in front and those at both sides. Dave tried a third button. It sounded the horn. Just how many horn controls does one car need? We both made further soothing gestures in all directions, as more and more bemused eyes turned on us. There would be no more exploratory button presses...
Rather unfortunately, at this exact moment, May – who was in hysterics in the rear seat – accidentally caught her elbow on a switch. Her window shot down. She immediately realised, reversed the switch and the window hurtled back up. Absolutely all eyes were on us now as we sat there in our toy town car (honestly, it only needed the lights to start flashing). We’d have liked the ground to open and swallow us up. Instead, penned in on all sides by traffic, there was nothing we could do other than sit there and brazen it out, making sure to touch absolutely nothing.
I made a good call when I insisted we stop halfway through the journey for Dave to do a big supermarket shop (with strict limits on tomato pasta) whilst I sorted out all our luggage from flight mode to car-camping mode, and then to treat ourselves to a meal of filling fast food (tacos). It meant we could be single-minded and efficient when we finally reached the campsite, 10 minutes before dusk and 50 minutes before pitch blackness. With all hands on deck, we managed to erect the tent and sort all the bedding and overnight paraphernalia in double-quick time. Dave then moved the car to the car park at the bottom of the hill as there was nowhere to park overnight near the tent (the 6 car spaces for the 9 tent pitches were already occupied). We were pleased to drop into bed after two exhausting days.
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