The US - A Banana Republic

 

In light of the ongoing happenings in Washington DC I had to refrain from continuing walking down our travel memory lane today.

This day was the ultimate embarrassment to the United States as a country and as the oldest democracy of the world. World leaders have condemned the rioters storming the US Capitol and with that the rhetoric of the President and many of his enablers. 

It is unfathomable that a horde of brainless Americans were able to break windows and commit crimes in the halls of American democracy. This was the darkest day of Trump's America, and it will remain a bad stain in the book of American history forever. 

What happened today conjures pictures of Banana Republics in South America, but unworthy of the USA.

Today the US was a Banana Republic. Let's just hope that this was the last volume in the book of Trump. May he rot in hell!

South-Bound We Continue And -Uffda- What Did We Find?

 Pictures are helping us to remember what has been. And rummaging in my old CDs I am glad I saved so many pics from the days long gone.

After leaving the border behind us we followed the I-5 through Washington State.

Towards late afternoon we were looking for an RV-Park and found Lake Ki, just a few miles west of I-5. 

Molly and Boomer had a great time at Lake Ki

Lake Ki is a beautiful RV-Park (They call themselves "Resort" now) and we got a truly idyllic site with a view of the lake. We stayed put for a couple of days and did a few day drives during that time. Camano Island, connected to the mainland was a beautiful destination. ,A special thing I remember was the "Uffda Shoppe" at Stanwood. 

       Camano Island to the left. The marker is on Stanwood

As Norwegians, we just had to stop at this Scandinavian Gift Shop. I remember we bought some Norwegian specialties. So, what does it mean to say "Uffda"?  Well, Norwegians say Uffda whenever they hear about something bad or disappointing. The Uffda store at Stanwood, WA was just the thing one would never forget.            

Passing Seattle a couple of days later, was like any other big city. 

Heavy traffic and often crazy driving made this a less memorable experience.

And that's enough for one day. Check back later for the continuing story.

Time For (Travel-)Memories

 The excitement could be felt in the house. The dogs had been watching us carefully has if they were afraid that something would change their lives for ever. And that feeling wasn't too much off reality. Of course it had befallen ourselves as we had planned this over at least a year. 

Lately, we had been running back and forth from our house and up to where the rig was parked. It was October 2005 and we were ready to break away from a life which to us had become the normal, though most people would probably have quite a few other thoughts of what was "normal". 

Afterall, the last change of our lives had just just been 42 months earlier when we had left Norway to live in Canada.

Our rig at the time, was a 37ft. 5th-Wheel and a Ford F350 Dually Diesel.

On this day in October, our rig was packed up and ready to go.

I had just stepped outside into the dark October evening to call in our 2 dogs. And there came Boomer, our yellow Labrador, into the shine from the outside lamp. He had something around his mouth which looked like straw, and he was behaving erratically rolling his face on the ground.

Investigating, I saw blood. Oh God, what had happened?

Well, I quickly found out that Boomer had a lot of porcupine quills in his face. We got him into the kitchen and tried our best to pull out the quills, but he behaved like a wild tiger. No chance! So we called the country vet. He promised to help and off we went 40km through the night.

This is the short prelude to how we started our winter-travelling days as snowbirds.

Next morning, with the quills removed, we climbed into the truck and took off for 6 months of adventure. Our route would lead us south via Calgary and the Banff Nat'l.Park into British Columbia, all the way to Vancouver.

From there we would pass into the US riding down I-5.

Before reaching Rogers's Pass, snow was

turning the mountains into a winter-wonder land, and before we even reached Vancouver, the 2. disaster had struck.

On the Coquihalla summit road the truck transmission went. Pouring oil had left a wet mark on the highway, before I managed to pull the rig over onto a narrow turn-out.

That, and the following harrowing experience with the tow truck racing down the 8% slope towards the town of Hope, narrowly missing a major collision with our 5t fiver behind, will for ever stay etched into our memories.

A 2. tow-truck right behind us, brought our truck down to Hope. Now, the name of the town is really appropriate as countless transmissions have been blown on this highway, and as the shop owner explained to us, we realized that we'd been the lucky ones as other trucks had burned on the highway when hot transmission oil had hit the likewise hot exhaust pipe.

We spent 3 days in a campground and were relegated to walking, instead of driving around. 5000 Dollars later we were back on track towards Vancouver. 

We entered the US on October 22.

The journey down the west coast was, and still is, the most beautiful we have ever done. Our first stop in Washington State was at Lake KI Campground where we stayed a couple of days to explore the outer coast.

But more of that at a later posting.

Santa's Many Helpers

 As a kid, did you believe in Santa? Or were you one of those smart-kicks who questioned how Santa would be able to visit all the children of the world in one day only?

Early on, and in anticipation of my inquisitive mind, my parents had made me aware of that Christmas is not necessarily celebrated everywhere on the globe and that some countries had Christmas on the 24th while other kids, mostly in English speaking countries, would first be served with gifts on the 25th. It sure stopped a barrage of further questions to my parents. Albeit, what I didn't know then was that the gifts had to be delivered on the MORNING of the 25th, which wouldn't give Santa much of a leeway to reach across from country to country. And Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer wasn't even known in Germany in those days. But in spite of all these obstacles, I was a believer in Santa for the longest time. Guess my parents made sure of it. 

Nowadays we know the real reason for Santa living up to the task. Santa has a large group of helpers all over the world. Yes, folks, that's the way Santa manages to get all over the world. There is a modern word for it: Outsourcing! Young dynamic managers fresh from school have been promoting this for years. It's the reason that if you order an item from say Amazon, it's not really coming from Amazon, but from China or Bangladesh. The moment your order is received at Amazon, it will be forwarded to China where the item goes into shipping. Obviously, shipping from China takes a bit more time than shipping. from say North Pole, AK. I have first-hand knowledge of this, as I ordered a pack of red Christmas candles from Amazon. They did sent me an email telling me that the item is coming as an "import" and that that would be the reason why Christmas and Santa would be gone before I would be able to stick the candles into my Advent decoration. But who would have thought that candles are not available directly within North America?

The difference with Santa's old-fashioned outsourcing compared to Amazon's is that Santa has it's own transportation system of reindeers, and not enough with that, once the Santa helpers come to your village they also use bicycles and some have big red trucks with lots of room for big hard parcels

We were lucky enough that we met a whole group of biking Santa-helpers coming along here. So, of course, we now know how Santa is getting the job done.

Just be on the look-out and you might see some as well.