Seemingly on any day of the calendar the road around Seattle are wild. If the time of day is "wrong", twelve or more lanes of traffic just crawl along, slower than a bicycle. and if the time is "right", the drivers zoom and dodge at high speed, well beyond what we see on Vancouver Island. Today, the day before one of the biggest holidays of the year, but at 7 a.m., we mostly ....HOLY CRAP! We are actually sitting in the brew pub beside the campground, and I am just trying to get today's page going. But within seconds of our sitting down, a mother moose and calf walked up to the door! Now moose is a bit of a famous topic with us. During our whole trip across Canada, we continually looked for moose, and saw nothing. We passed the most luscious looking ponds, nothing! Then two years ago, when we cycled through this area with Avi and Violet, I took them for a short walk while Dodie was reorganizing the gear. And there, too far to go get Dodie, was a moose. The kids took a lot of pictures and then ran back to show Dodie what she had missed.
So on this trip the plan was to return to where the kids had spotted the moose, and hope that finally Dodie could see one. what we did not expect was for a pair to almost walk into our restaurant on day one! I guess we could go home now,
Things started out red hot for David as well. (David is Laurie's new husband, he and daughter Evelyn will accompany us on the Hiawatha on day 1 (tomorrow). David has a Ph.D. in chemistry, and has put it to good use with an extensive home beer brewing setup. David loves gourmet beer! I suggested bringing him some as we headed out here from Seattle, but Dodie pointed out that this brew pub is here. Within minutes of arriving, David introduced himself to the owner, and now that the moose have departed, he has nine quite big looking beers in front of him. It's the sampler pack, he says.
Dave says he may be back to try out a further nine!
Ok, let's go back to Square One: I was ranting about Seattle traffic. Actually it was not so much a rant as a way to introduce the contrasting landscapes that are involved in ifting from Seattle city, on the coast, to Wallace Idaho nestled among one of the sets of mountains that precedes the Rockies as one heads East. The collision (actually, subduction) of the Pacific Plate with the Juan da Fuca Plate and the North American Plate in the "Cascadia Subduction Zone" has created not only the chain of volcanoes that extends from Mount Baker down to Mount Adams, but also mountain ranges that loosely parallel the coast. With the prevailing winds from the west off the Pacific, the rains fall on the windward sides and behind them is dry desert like land. So our trip east featured first intense traffic and then a succession of lush forested mountains and dry sagebrush deserts. The Silver Valley, the target of this cycle tour, is just west of the mountain range that defines the border between Idaho and Montana. So that makes it a fairly lush area, and obviously, it is stuffed with moose!
