Cruisin’ Back To America: Seaquest Park, WA

Tonight we are at the foot of Mount Saint Helens. When Romney found out we were camping close to a volcano, he replied “That doesn’t sound so smart.” We assured him we would have lots of notice if it were going to erupt during our visit and that our “tent” had a motor we could run away from any scalding lava that may come our way. He felt better.

We started the day in another country, but not for long. A border crossing at Peace Arch took us quickly away from beautiful/cruel Vancouver, and into Washington state. Tomorrow we turn in the RV in Portland, so we knew that today would be a long day of driving to get us from Vancouver all the way to Mount Saint Helens, or about 60 miles from Portland for our early return time in the morning. With all the driving we needed to do, we only had a few hours to spend in Seattle. We googled “Top 10 things to do and see in Seattle” (we can do that again, because we are in the U.S.!) Other than the famous Pike Market Fish Market, the only two things we felt we “had” to do were the Space Needle and the Monorail. With 2 hours of parking (we had to park on the street in our big beastly vehicle) we weren’t sure exactly what we would come back having actually done.


The space needle was easy to get to, easy to buy tickets, easy to get on the elevator to the top and lots of fun to look around from up top. We can say we have “seen” all of Seattle in only 2 hours with the co-operation of the sunshine and virtually cloudless sky.




The view was stunning and clear, and from what we understood fromt the elevator operator that can be a rare occasion. Stating the obvious, in the Pacific Northwest even the sunny days often start off cloudy.

We finished “seeing” Seattle from above and jumped on the monorail to downtown to hunt down some lunch. The monorail runs through a tunnel created by the bits and pieces that make up the Music Experience Building.




Our luck granted us seats up front with the boys sitting next to the monorail driver looking out the front window. (Not sure how lucky the monorail driver felt.)


We grabbed a quick, but delicious lunch and raced back to the RV before our meter expired, loaded up and headed out of the city to our camping spot for the night: Seaquest State Park. Another few hours in the car, and we were there. It is a beautiful, primitive camp spot (with lots of bugs!) We stopped at the Mount Saint Helen visitor center, which had closed 15 minutes before our arrival. Not too sad, since the path around a wetland lake full of lilly pads was open and a much nicer way to stretch our legs than sitting listening to a park ranger give us facts that our brains just really can’t process right now. We walked the path to completion and got settled for the night in the RV, with the boys riding around on their bikes while Bill and I made dinner.


After dinner, our last night RV’ing was spent eating, reminiscing about our trip, building a lego model of the Space Needle and watching Star Wars Episode One.





Family time!