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(Ness Lake Bible Camp)
Happy Birthday, Megan
We left Mt. Gilead Thursday afternoon, headed for Seattle (along Highway 5 this time!) We got there Saturday afternoon, after driving in the mountains the entire trip. I had no idea the Cascades covered so much area, or were so very beautiful. They’re not as steep as the Rockies, with the summit of the lower range being about 4600 feet~~but when you’re starting at 80’ elevation, that’s quite a climb! But it was a gradual climb, on wide roads, so not too hard on the motor home.
We didn’t do much sightseeing in Seattle…neither one of us felt like it, and we had several regular type errands to take care of before we entered Canada. We had a wonderful visit with a dear friend of ours, and we did tour Boeing. I don’t have pictures because you’re not allowed to have anything in your hands during the tour~~apparently they think having a camera on your wrist is having something in your hands! But let me tell you a little about it: The Boeing plant is, by volume, the largest building in the world. In one building we saw at least a
A 777 can fit through this door.
You could put Disney World in this building, and still have 140 acres left for covered parking. dozen planes being made, anywhere from 747s to their new 787…and the building was by no means crowded. There’s no heating or air conditioning in the building; the machinery and people supply the heat, and in the summer the breezes keep it cool enough. The plant runs 24 hours a day, and employs 29,000 people in three different shifts! The people come on shift in six minute intervals, to help keep traffic flowing. All of the plumbing and electrical equipment is under the building so when something needs to be worked on, it doesn’t delay the plant operations. Boeing owns a bridge over Interstate 5, which is the only privately owned bridge crossing an interstate in the state of Washington. They use it to move their planes from manufacturing to painting...which they have to do during the midnight shift, because it definitley causes traffic problems on the highway when one of those gigantic machines is being rolled from place to place! They also have a museum, but we weren’t able to visit it because it was closed for a ceremony transferring the keys to a newAir France plane.
A funny thing happened in Seattle: we planned on leaving there
On Canadian Highway 1--which is much friendlier than our Highway 1!
We ended up spending the night along this road, because we couldn’t find an rv park that was open
it worked fine, because their pullouts are large, and it’s allowed. Notice the railroad tunnel below the bridge. There’s also a train on the other side of the river, where the train travels north (this side travels south.) Tuesday morning, but then decided to stay another day, as we had plenty of time. We picked this park merely because it was close to our friend’s house, but there were half a dozen in that immediate area, and probably 75 from the south end of Seattle to the north end, that we could have chosen. Late Tuesday afternoon we were getting ready to leave the rv and we saw a black Trooper (that’s an automobile, not a person!) pull up in front of us. It looked like Leroy and Arlene’s outfit….and sure enough, there comes their motor home! They were assigned a parking place just ahead of us, and over one! If they’d been anyplace else in the park we probably wouldn’t have seen them, and if they’d come in after we left, we may not have noticed! We were all amazed at the odds of it happening like that! All we knew of each other’s trip was that we would be going through Seattle! They stayed there until Thursday.
Things went well with the border crossing, but I always feel like we’re at the mercy of the guard on duty, as to what we are allowed to
Beetle damage
Here you get a look at the rocks & trees together. See how sparse the trees are? The pine beetles have done so much damage to the trees in Canada. This is the Fraser River bring. I can’t say this guy was friendly, but he did let me bring my two plants into the county, and he didn’t search our rig.
Prince George is a really really long way north. We can almost see the Arctic Circle from here….almost! We encountered
snow long before we got to the camp! We were driving along when this conversation took place:
Bob (not happy)~~ “DID YOU SEE THAT??? THERE WAS ICE ON THAT LAKE.”
I had noticed ice a few miles earlier, but didn’t want to burden him with that information, so I said~~”It’s more of a pond. It’s not a real lake.”
Bob~~”Yeah, well it’s real ice.”
And there’s real snow too! Last winter was the worst winter they’ve had in umpteen years, and this winter broke last year’s records! Two weeks ago they got 31” of snow in 14 hours, right here at the camp. Oh, joy! But it’s warmish, so the snow should melt quickly!
We haven’t looked around the camp much because A) it’s cold B) there are 300 women here this weekend for a retreat C) what’s not covered with snow is covered with mud! And there's enough mud
to make me glad I'm not on recess duty!
One more note before I get to the pictures: on the way up we noticed how sickly the trees look. In some places we thought they’d had fires, but it wasn’t blackened. We found out it’s pine beetles. They’ve just done huge damage up here, and there’s no way to stop them. They burrow into the trees between the bark and the tree and eat the sweet sticky stuff, causing the bark to fall off, and eventually the tree dies. Prince George is a logging city, so between the pine beetle and the housing slump in the States, the economy is suffering up here.
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Patti
non-member comment
I Like IT!!!
Have you wondered if this is getting paid back for all the nice weather you have had while we have had to deal with snow, cold, rain and Montana Weather all winter long???