Beachwood Resort, Birch Bay, WA – 7/6-7/12/18

Their sign says Five-Star! Five-Star what? Another very old RV park with the only upgrades being a handful of 50Amp sites buried so deep in trees you need a Thai Seal team to find them. Again, find your own site. No reserved sites. That’s a ridiculous way to operate. You end up with truck campers and those stubby little bubbles about the same size as Haystacks Calhoun filling up the huge sites and monsters like us in sites only Twiggy could comfortably fit in. A totally outdated concept. After those dozen or so large sites, most of the other full hookup sites are face-to-face, that is, one RV pulls in from the east side, one from the west so you share your “camping area”. That’s great if your neighbor is family, or you’re both swapping couples. The sites are so close, you both can’t put out your awnings but if you have slides and into that swapping thing…., oh, nevermind (editor redaction).

One more note for you RVers, sewer hookup is in the far rear so don’t pull in any further than getting your rear end out of the road. Sites are ridiculously narrow for large RV’s. Another bad Coast To Coast park. Hey Mr. Profit, your parks suck.

On the bright side, we had enough distance between ourselves and the towering trees to the south to see the DTV satellites. This far north, just a few miles from the 49th parallel, the dish needs to “see” 31° over the southeast horizon. That was about the only positive about the park, and location near the border.

New subject. Hey, we’re still exploring the West Coast and on the very bright side, have made it to our northernmost RV destination, Birch Bay, Washington.

Cute little tourist town with one road along the bay and lots of parking so you can get out and take pictures – and find pretty rocks on the beach. There were several restaurants on the strip and decided this was the town to go out to dinner for some crab. Andrea wanted Crab Louie and The Beach had it. We got to the restaurant at about 6 on a Saturday night. Turns out a band had been playing since 3pm. We sat down outside on the front deck but could still hear the band well enough to catch the end of a kickass version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Are you kidding me? Then they banged out Led Zeppelin’s ‘Rock and Roll’. We had to get a little closer. We moved our table around the corner so we could at least see the band.

No, I don’t see them in this shot either. Then they did two stinkers and said goodnight. “Local bands are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Sage words from the 20th century’s greatest philosopher.

Hello! Can we please have dinner? Karaoke is about to begin. Their computer went down and everybody’s orders got screwed up. The people who sat down next to us a half hour after we got there had dinner and when their check was lost, were told, “It’s about $35.” Our dinner finally arrived and Andrea had trouble finding the crab in her Louie. They were out of the local porter beer so I settled for a red, which was very good, to go with my chef’s salad. You can’t screw that up. All in all, it was worth it. The band had its moments, if they’d only stick with the heavy stuff.

Then the sun set.

Take a look to the left of the tip of the bay. Beyond lies a piece of land hanging in a peninsula off Canada. Stop now, if you’re not driving, and Google “Point Roberts”. If you haven’t read the Wikipedia page yet, briefly, after the War of 1812, it took some time to finally settle the northern boundary of the 49th parallel between the US and Canada. But that left a little piece of a peninsula in British Columbia hanging under that dividing line. Point Roberts is part of the state of Washington with its northern boundary being Canada and the rest of it hanging out in The Straits of Juan deFuca. They have their own border crossing and all the bullshit that goes with it.

Speaking of border security guys, —no, the editorial staff says don’t. How about: “Dear Canadian Border Patrol, please put a sign above the booth of an officer in training.” All the other lines progressed at a rate of about eight cars to our one. It was frustrating.

So, despite first impressions at the border, we proceeded to our northernmost driving destination on this entire journey, Burnaby Mountain Park, at Simon Fraser University, latitude 49.2792. Anyway, the location is northeast of Vancouver, BC. It was stunning. Besides the views,

and the views,

and the views,

the main attraction was this:

Can you read that?

If not, Google it.

Next. We went back to Birch Bay the next day and found more colorful rocks. It was too far to Vancouver to drive there on consecutive days. But, The Day After – did you see that made-for-TV movie about when they finally pushed the button? Maybe you should watch it after Dumbo’s latest performance – we went back through the city to Stanley Park. We had heard so many good things about Vancouver being so beautiful that we had to check it out. For a city, I guess. We were underwhelmed. Maybe the hype was too much. But let’s not focus on the traffic and the inner city looking like every inner city.

Stanley Park is beautiful, surrounded by water with a seawall path all around and dog friendly. We parked near a big marina,

a Navy and Marine training base,

and some hokey, made-for-the-park totem poles:

I cropped out all the tourist heads. Perhaps they belonged. These things seem to mock the tourists.

It is a very active port. Here we see a ship coming in to pick up that load of hair dye for the US Oragutan-In-Chief.

Lots of stuff going on.

And lots of seaplanes.

We did see some wildlife. Some ducks. Wait, Canadian Geese. How about that!

And then back to that hoity-toity marina – that building with pink tinted glass was cool.

But you can keep your big cities.

This ends the northbound journey that started on Interstate 5 in San Diego, about 2,200 miles ago in March. But the trip ain’t over yet. Bucket list number 3, yep, that high, is still to come.

And then, July 16, 2018, we hear the Traitor-In-Chief say he’d rather take the word of the former head of the KGB then the work of all our own security forces.

My reaction was, inexplicably, in a foreign tongue, “§¥Ωθฯ￦”. I think that’s Russian (those horizontal lines indicate the phrase is filled with anger) for “You fucking idiots.” Come on, hold up your hands, Trumpty-Dumbsters. You fucked up.