7/18 - Yakima to Mount Vernon, Washington

The drive from Yakima to Mount Vernon was successfully navigated with beautiful scenery most of the way. The roads couldn't match up to the scenery, though. We were on interstates for all but 5 miles out of 208 and a lot of it was really rough. It's hard enough on people but, watching how it constantly shook the cats, we were both surprised and thankful they took it as well as they did. They really are very good travelers. Lovie doesn't care.....she handles everything well.

Yakima averages .24" of rain in July. I think they got their entire month's allowance this morning.  We were nearly finished breaking down when it started so we managed to get on the road without being drenched, but it rained hard for most of the 30 miles up the valley to I-90.

Eerie looking light going north through the Yakima Valley this morning.  The "V" in the distance is an open cut for the interstate.

Clouds......

We had fantastic clouds for most of the drive.

One of the huge hay bale storage facilities near Ellensburg. We saw a lot of hay bales across the Dakotas and Montana, but none of them were stored in structures like these....they were all out in the weather. Here the bales are all protected from the weather.  Maybe because there's more rain here.

Masses of road construction on I-90.  This is a bit of Keechelus Lake on the east side of Snoqualmie Pass. 

The grade going up Snoqualmie Pass.  The pass is 3,066' feet, a 900' climb in 20 miles so it's not bad at all on the east side.  On the west side the descent is 2,500' in less than 20 miles. We were glad we weren't coming up from the west.

Somewhere around the top of Snoqualmie Pass. The clouds were too low to see the top of the peaks.  Because of the clouds we couldn't even tell we'd gone over the top until we were suddenly going down a much steeper grade.

Trucker's highway humor.

We hit civilization with a vengeance as we approached Bellevue. We haven't been in traffic like this for a long time. Not fun. Bellevue is across Lake Washington to the east of Seattle. The Seattle metro area is around four million people now and there doesn't seem to be any place to put more roads. They've had an on-going battle over widening the interstates, sort of like the decades-long battle in Asheville over how to get I-26 finished. As a result, nothing has been settled and the traffic situation is dreadful. We are not looking forward to coming back through this mess on Saturday when we move down to Olympia.

We arrived at our campground in Mount Vernon in time for a late lunch, then went to the Discount Tire store in Burlington, less than 4 miles away. When they found out we were from NC they mentioned that they get calls from people looking for their store in Burlington, NC. When they start giving directions on how to get there the people say "Huh?"  Lucky for us they had 6 Michelin tires in stock in our size so we got all new tires and are now good to go for many thousands of miles. It's a big relief to have that accomplished.

Tomorrow is our whale-watching boat tour. Fingers crossed for good weather and lots of whales.