So today we didn’t travel too far and slowly explored the towns of Whitefish and Kalispell and then up to Lake McDonald.

I used the tripod to take the fast flowing river and to try to capture the beautiful pebbles in the water of the river and lake.

 

This man keeps getting in my photos…Who is it Louis and Otis?

The pebbles are in all  colours. I have saved a few to bring home. I hope you can see them in my photos.

We still haven’t seen a bear or a moose, but we have seen mountain goats, wild turkeys and a heron (no camera handy to take photos)

Thank you for your lovely comments Blandine, I do feel like I  am in a kind of National Geographic territory!

Hope you are all ok and Anona are your lectures finished now I wonder.

olToday the weather changed. It was sunny and clear first thing and then the wind got up. By afternoon it was so windy it was hard to open the car door and then close it again. It was hard to walk upright in the gales.We had flurries of snow off and on all day. Now it is evening the wind has dropped and its raining. So now Ive given you the weather report I’ll tell you where we have been.

We travelled up the East side of the Glacier NP. It was quite a long journey as because the Road to the Sun is still closed at the top, you cannot do the loop and so you have to travel back the same way.

We saw the Rocky Mountains in all their glory. They are very steep and jut right up into the sky. We travelled up to about 5000 feet. the road and rail follow the valleys and raging rivers, breaking their banks in places due to all the snow melting.

We saw one mountain that has 3 sides and the water from each different side goes in 3 different directions across America.

We stopped for lunch in a famous old café and had soup and salad. it was good old fashioned homely food which we miss.

 

 

Louis and Lily this is a yellow school bus. Most children in the countryside are picked up near their homes and taken to school on it and then taken home after school. Their families wait there at the bus stop for the youngest ones the others walk home by themselves from the bus. xxx Otis you go to school when you are 4.

We woke up to another sunny day and set off as soon as we could to see Glacier National Park.

The water was so still and so we saw beautiful reflections on Lake McDonald, it couldn’t have been better for us!

This lake is famous for the tiny coloured pebbles in the clear water.

The lake had many beautiful views.

The lake is fed by a very fierce fast flowing river with white water rapids. This is because of the snow melt. We got some fabulous photos.

In the afternoon we travelled as far as Essex on the East side of the park. again we saw huge rivers and lovely mountainous views.

We stopped at the station at Essex that has a huge hotel. I sat on the veranda on a swinging chair, sipping cold diet coke while watching freight trains and hummingbirds feeding………..perfect.

We have arrived in Montana near to Glacier National Park.

The way the sat nav brought us was very scenic. We passed through valleys with snow topped mountains and loads of lakes. We have hot sunny weather at the moment and people were swimming in the lakes. I bet it was cold in the water.

 

White Fish is there for the ski season in Winter and for tourists to the National Park the rest of the year. So we have shops and cafes nearby to look round in the evening.

I haven’t many photos of the journey so Ill send some more of Alaska at the end of my letter.

PS Lily there is a casino here called “Lucky Lil’s” xxxxx

Our last afternoon yesterday (Saturday) we spent on the water front in Seattle.

Seattle is a very cosmopolitan town with many younger adults everywhere.

We visited the famous Seattle Pike Street Market which is so huge it takes ages to walk through.

Then onto the Space Needle, 605 feet tall. You can pay to go up to the top but we didn’t go up (That saved us some money hee hee!)  We were tired by all the walking we did and after leaving the cruise ship in the morning.

We went near the Pacific Space Centre nearby, The pavement stretches all along the sea front harbour and features many modern sculptures.

Today we travelled up to Spokane. We are still just in Washington State.

We saw this beautiful waterfall with its own rainbow

We passed over a huge plateau and many lakes

Did you notice the horses on the hill top are made of steel.

Otis we are now near  little town called Otis Orchard!

Alex we saw this sign in Seattle

Hi here are some more photos of Alaska.

These are from Ketchikan a native first nation town. the Indian Totem poles were very tall. I hope you like them Lily and Anona and the Indian artwork.

Lily Louis and Otis can you see the barnacles on the whales tail?

Do you like the seal peeping at us?

We travelled on this train high up into the mountains near Juneau, it was very scary Louis and Otis. Anona you would have loved it

Love to Alice and Xavi xxxx

Love to all our 6 grandchildren, granddad and grandma think of you every day xxx

 

 

 

 

 

Alaska USA

We are back in free Wi-Fi world again. The same hotel in Seattle that we left a week ago today.

I did not write my blog all week as Wi-Fi costs would have been $40 each 24 hours!

Did we like the cruise life? Yes and no. We felt a bit trapped and not free to explore as we wanted but we knew it would be like that. The Princess Line is very well organised with thorough routines and clean. There are all kinds of food and drink available 24 hours. The food is very good, you can’t fault it.

The other passengers were a mix of many cultures and really friendly…..only some were demanding and rude (mainly middle aged white Americans!).

We took hundreds of photos of snow topped mountains, fjords, glaciers, small ice bergs the 3 small towns we visited and wildlife. A humpbacked whale breached 5 times near our boat and slapped the water several times with its tail… wonderful. We saw seals and very cute sea otters swimming and laying floating on their backs.

Hope you like my photos

And these are only a taste of what beauty we saw! We’ll be talking about it for ever xxxx

 

Mann Tours is always about 4 hours early for everything ..not today!

We thought it was going to be so smooth today. A two hour journey to the hotel and return our hire car by 6pm……. no

We went back to Dungeness Spit to say goodbye to our 🦅 eagles. We were so pleased an eagle was there on a post eating a long stingray type fish. We were able to get so close to it to photograph. We literally got hundreds of snaps among which are some really excellent shots as it stayed there for ages.

We set off on our journey calling for a coffee and lunch at Port Townsend. This time it was sunny and the town looked so inviting. We strolled around thinking we had loads of time.

So now it was about 12.30 and plenty of time….

We got as far as the bridge over the inlet and decided to stop at the viewing area to see the bridge and wide expanse of water. There was a submarine being escorted by navy boats towards Juan de Fuca inlet and the Pacific Ocean. A young sailor was there and gave us a running commentary on all we saw. It was so interesting. All about the IBMs similar to those deployed in Scotland. We got in our car to set off again but were stopped by the police. Next thing we knew all traffic was stopped and  the bridge was raised. We had to stay there for well over an hour until the submarine slowly was escorted passed.

I haven’t got my laptop it’s packed away so no photos today. But grandad said he’d send them for his grandchildren to see over the weekend.

We set off again after being made to wait until all the backed up traffic passed by …more time wasted…. Then the police let our only 4 cars go so mean of them, they could have let our few cars go first.

Well we still had reasonable time left for the 6pm deadline we thought. Next thing….

We were following instructions from the sat nav . Then I noticed on the road it was painted local traffic /ferry traffic. Vince said don’t worry the sat nav says go straight on…

“board ferry” commanded sat nav.  It cost us $16.50 !  It took 45 mins to cross over the inlet.

Oh well that will save us time we thought…….but no we were thrust straight into rush hour traffic jams towards and through and out of Seattle.

We got to the hotel after 5pm and emptied the car to take to the car rental. The sat nav didn’t know where it was and took us round in circles. So when we finally got there we had 5 minutes to spare PHEW.

back in the hotel it is full of 16 to 30 year olds all dressed up bizarrely in costumes as there is a my little pony convention in the hotel all weekend. The funny thing is there as just as many boys/ men as woman

More news tomorrow as we board the Princess cruises on the “Ruby Princess”

And  a week off driving for Vince!

xxxxx

Today was grey and pouring with rain mostly, although from time to time it stopped for a few minutes.

We called in at John Wayne Marina,(we visited here on our journey up to Sequim) and saw a blue heron.

We were following the coast line up to Admiralty Inlet that leads to Seattle.

We reached Port Townsend. It is an historic town with well preserved buildings from the 1860’s. it was full of quirky shops gift, craft and clothes shops and coffee houses, and ships chandlers. We liked the feel of the place and spent quite a while there, in and out of the rain.

Next we went to the Artillery Museum. It is housed in buildings on the now deserted naval site from during WW1 and WW2. The whole site is on an inlet and was there to defend the surrounding cities from the Japanese. the guns were never needed for war and eventually the base was closed.

Back in Port Townsend it had stopped raining and we found some sea otters

Hee Hee!

AND WHAT I GRANDAD DOING?

I hope he paid for damages!

More tomorrow as we get to Seattle xxxx

Well today we wanted to visit all the sites west of us that we had so far not seen. First stop was by the salmon leap. Salmon are in this river all year but only in Autumn do you see them leap up stream to their spawning grounds. The river was fast flowing and there were stopping off spots to view the rapids.

All along this road there was ancient forest with green tree moss.

We continued to a town called Fork. It is where a few rivers converge to flow into the Pacific Ocean. After eating fish and chips ( much smaller pieces of fish than we have in our fish and chip shops and long spindly thin fried chips) we followed this river through the Indian Reservation to the coast. This is the beach we found there with huge amounts of drift wood and interesting rocks off shore.

On the way back we called to see the wildlife refuge near our motel and saw bald headed eagles, a white tailed kite and a heron.

We are now wondering how all our luggage will fit in the suitcases again as we give up our hire car and go on the cruise on Saturday!

Hope Lily  finishes her SATs on Thursday but if you have another day of them carry on doing your best and don’t worry too much about them.xxxxx