Ross Lake National Recreation Area is a part of the North Cascades complex that I started to write about yesterday. Because Ross Lake actually encompasses the road that passes through the complex, it has a much higher visitation than North Cascades National Park. North Cascades gets 29,000 visitors a year while Ross Lake gets 905,000. …
From September 2017
North Cascades National Park, Washington
Last week Tom and I headed to a new National Park – a place we have never been – North Cascades National Park. While we are still in Washington, we are visiting as many national park sites as possible. Because there are so many, we have to hit about one every day before we head …
Deception Pass State Park, Washington
Tom and I left San Juan Island a week ago, although we didn’t travel far. We drove the RV onto the ferry, got off in Anacortes, and drove 17 miles south to Whidbey Island. We are staying at North Whidbey RV Park (more on that later) for a week while we explore northern Washington. After …
City of the Lost by Kelley Armstrong
Do you like mysteries with a strong female detective in an unusual setting? I do! So I loved discovering the novel “City of the Lost” by Kelley Armstrong. It is the first book in the Casey Duncan series. Casey Duncan is a homicide detective with a guilty secret: she killed a man but was never …
Let Me Die Loving
I recently read a lovely poem by Samuel Hall Young called “Into the Sunset.” Here is the poem: Let me die, working. Still tackling plans unfinished, tasks undone! Clean to its end, swift may my race be run. No laggard steps, no faltering, no shirking; Let me die, working! Let me die, thinking. Let me …
Questions Old and New at San Juan Island
As we prepare to leave San Juan Island Historical Park, I want to share with you the questions, old and new, that people asked most often. I do this as we leave every park, and you can find previous questions from Death Valley, Chickamauga, Fort Frederica, and Grand Portage. Here are the top four questions …
Spun Yarn Knitting Projects
What good is learning to spin if I don’t knit with the spun yarn that I make? Of course I’m not going to do anything so pointless, so here are a few of the knitting projects I’ve been working on. I haven’t posted any projects for a while, so there are also some from the …
Yellow Jackets Attack: The Sting of the Wild
It seems like every park Tom and I work at has a different kind of stinging or biting insect. In Death Valley the buffalo gnats stung us. In Minnesota the mosquitoes and biting black flies pestered us. At Fort Frederica the sand gnats tormented us. We thought we had escaped all these stinging and biting …
Rocky Bay Cafe in Friday Harbor
Before we leave San Juan Island and Friday Harbor, I want to review one more restaurant. It turns out all that we ate more than once at all the restaurants I’ve reviewed, so we had to return a second time to Rocky Bay Cafe before I wrote my review. Rocky Bay Cafe is a …
God of Little Things
Do you ever feel like you should be doing more with your life? That God is calling you to something’s awesome but your boss or your students or your kids are making so much noise you can’t hear? Do you get overwhelmed by the everyday tasks and wish there was something big you could do. …