Checking In From The Road

I left Vancouver yesterday to set out on a mini adventure. First, I swung by Langley to have lunch with my dad, and laid out a few options about where I was going to go. During the course of the meal I eventually finalized on doing the North Cascades Highway in the United States, and headed out shortly afterwards.

I spent about an hour waiting in the line-up to cross the border. Considering I didn’t really have a final destination, the border guard was actually pretty nice to me and even chatted with me for a bit about life in Vancouver. I made it to Rockport on the first night, and set up camp near a little river.

I didn’t have a book to read or anything mildly entertaining, so I just sat in front of the camp fire with a few beers and relaxed. Later that night I invited myself over to a neighbors campsite and enjoyed a few more beers with Brian and Sara, both from Bellingham.

They were both a ton of fun, and even started feeding me free beers after a while. There’s was a little pub up near the highway that we ended up heading up to for an hour or so. After that, I retired to my little spot beside the river.

I actually overslept this morning, and missed the official check-out time by an hour. I decided to continue along the North Cascades highway (which is only open in the summer time), stopping at a few picturesque spots along the way. My favourite was Diablo Lake, pictured here:

I was actually pretty beat today, and really didn’t feel like being in the car. I pushed myself to get to Spokane, since it’s a large city close to some major highways. I couldn’t find a campsite I liked near here, so I’m currently holed up the first hotel I saw that offered free wireless internet.

I’m debating heading further east tomorrow, or perhaps finding a nice campground near here and relaxing for a day. I’m leaning towards the latter, since I wouldn’t mind a day of reading or sitting by a stream.

I actually picked up a GPS unit for my car on the way down here, and it’s been really great to have. In fact, it seems pretty strange that I ever traveled without one. If you want to stop, you just click what you’re looking for, and a list of whatever (gas stations, hotels, camp grounds) comes up and you can pick which one you want to navigate to. Plus, it always gives you a real time estimate of “are we there yet?” so you always know how much longer it is.