Yaak River to Puyallup - July 26th to 31st

Ten minutes after leaving Yaak River Campground on the morning of July 26th, I was in Idaho and two hours later in Spokane.  As I had posted on Facebook, the battery in the laptop was no longer holding a charge and my genealogy friend Miriam had offered to let me have a new battery sent to her home in Spokane, which I did. It was due to arrive on the 28th.

The RV Park where I stayed had good wifi (the access point was two sites down from mine) and a library was just a few miles away. I also had an electric hookup at the RV Park. So I got caught up with Facebook and wrote a few blog posts.

On the morning of the 27th I awoke to find a flat tire on Van Dora. The nice lady in the office of the RV Park recommended Les Schwab Tires, which was a few miles down the road. So I called them, they came out and put some air in the tire and I drove to the store. After an hour or so I was told that they could not find the cause of the flat. The tech had another tech check it over and he found nothing. They did replace the valve stem just in case it had gone bad. So that was really not a good feeling. Why had the tire gone flat? Thankfully, there hasn't been any problelm with the tires since then.

The laptop battery arrived, as scheduled. Miriam and I met for supper and spent a wonderful evening together discussing genealogy and other things. Her neighbor took the photo below of us and Van Dora. Thank you so much, Miriam, for an enjoyable evening and for letting me use your address for delivery of the battery (which, by the way, has been working quite well - I get about 3-4 hours of use, depending upon what I'm doing.)

Miriam Robbins and Becky Wiseman. July 28, 2015 in Spokane, Washington.

Heading north on US 395, I left Spokane the morning of the July 29th. It was designated a  scenic highway but I didn't think it all that scenic though it was a nice drive. At Colville I turned south on SR 25 following the Columbia River, which was a very scenic drive (though I didn't take any pictures) and then back on U.S. 2 toward Coulee City.

Steamboat Rock State Park was my stop for the night. It was a hot 92 degrees so I didn't even attempt to take the hike up to the top of Steamboat Rock! I relaxed around the campsite, which had several nice big shade trees, and there was a nice breeze, which made it bearable. It cooled off quite nicely after the sun went down.

The next morning (Thursday, July 30th) I took SR 17/155 south, a nice drive along the river with numerous lakes, making my way toward  U.S. 12 at Yakima. By the time I got to Yakima, the temperature was 98 degrees! I continued west on U.S. 12 toward Mt. Rainier National Park stopping at Dog Lake campground in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie Nat'l Forest for the night.

The morning of July 31st, I continued west on U. S. 12 toward Mt. Rainier. Below is the "first view" of the mountain coming in from the east.

I had contacted a distant cousin on the Phend side who lived near Puyallup. When I had come through this area five years ago she and her husband were away on vacation so we didn't meet up then. As it turned out, they were preparing to leave on vacation the next day. So I drove on up to the Sunrise area and I took a short walk along one of the trails on the south side.

After about two hours I decided I'd better find a place to stay for the night. As I was driving down from Sunrise Point I heard my phone beeping. I had a text message from my cousin! Their departure had been delayed until Tuesday and they would be delighted to have me visit. Two and a half hours later, I was at their place near Puyallup.

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "Yaak River to Pallayup - July 26th to 31st," Kinexxions, posted September 5, 2015 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2015/09/yaak-river-to-puyallup.html : accessed [access date])