After saying good-bye to everybody that morning, we leave Duncan, BC, with the tiny freezer full of Coho and Spring salmon. We drive to Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal, where we first stepped foot on Vancouver Island. We catch the noon ferry to Tsawwassen. The ferry ride is beautiful, meandering between islands, with some seals, dolphins and jellyfish hanging out in the water. Mountain ranges are on the horizon. We recognize the mountains around the Whistler area, but then we are confused by a majestic snow peak emerging from the clouds. It is not south so it has nothing to do with the Olympic mountains. We learn later that it is Mt. Baker, sticking out like a huge pimple right in front of the Cascades, ready to explode like the volcano that it is.
Back in Canada's mainland, we drive
south to the Motherland. And the next stop is: the United States
customs. Always a challenge. And this one is not an exception. We are
sent to the agriculture inspection, because of a couple of apples
that we have had with us since Minneapolis. The problem is that we
have a bunch of unlabeled food, plus those salmon filets in the
freezer. We are pretty nervous about the inspection. A little bit
less once the young woman in charge of our case is all excited that
she is sharing Yellow’s birthday plus one year. Ten minutes later,
she comes back with those two rotten apples and a bag of rice,
wanting to know if it was from India. Fortunately, it was from
France. So we can keep the rice and enter the United States of
America!
We settle down at the Bellingham RV
Park in the afternoon, eating a late lunch and planning the next
days. Then, we bike to downtown Bellingham and browse around the
city. Not a big city, with some charming buildings here and there,
but a city with a university, which means a city with some flair. We
stop at the famous Mallard’s to taste their Chili ice cream.
Unfortunately, it is not available for the moment, so we treat
ourselves with some honey apricot, vanilla black sesame and white
Russian ice cream. On the way back, we want to check Boundary Bay
Brewery, but it was so crowded because of some kind of festival that
we end up at the Chuckanut Brewery for some German-style beers.
And this makes a great transition to
the next day, as we go for a trip on the Chuckanut Drive between
Bellingham and Mount Vernon. But this happens later in the day, as we
are running some errands in the morning. We first stop at a local
fruit stand on the side of the road, and get some tomatoes, peaches
and raspberries. We can right away tell you that the raspberries are
delicious, as we get to taste them before buying, not the kind you
find in the superstores. Then we went to shop at the Fred Meyer
superstore. After Canada, discovering the food prices at Fred Meyer
was like a dream. The milk, the cheese, the produce were so much
cheaper. We were so happy that we ended up eating some burgers and
Cajun French fries at the neighboring Five Guys. After that, we went
to a Co-op grocery store, still in Bellingham. This type of stores –
and business in general – is very interesting to us and we talk a
little bit with a couple of people working there. And we also get a
bottle of local wine. Finally, the last stop is at the AT&T
store. As Red’s semester is starting tomorrow, we have to get her
the best tools to study online efficiently. We already have a
wireless internet hotspot, we only need a SIM card to get internet on
the road – as long as there is coverage of course. That’s what we
get at that AT&T store. And off we go.
That Chuckanut drive, here it is. The
sky is pretty cloudy so we don’t spend as much time on that drive,
but it’s a sweet one, winding between the ridges of the Chuckanut
Mountains and the waters of Bellingham and Samish Bays. We first stop
at Fairhaven, historic town south of Bellingham, definitely a
touristic destination, agitated by the pulses of some kind of hippie
festival that day. We skip Larrabee State Park because of the $10 fee
and just admire the bay from different viewpoints along the way. In
front of an oyster restaurant, we meet a group of people from Austin,
TX, traveling the same way but in the opposite direction. We end up
chatting together for a while, before heading south to Mount Vernon
across a very developed agricultural area. We arrive at Mount Vernon
RV Park at the end of the afternoon, and take advantage of the good
internet services to set up the hotspot and get to work.
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