8/06/2008 - 8/22/3008 Birch Bay, WA

 I flew to FL for 2 weeks on Sept. 10 to visit family & friends, so now I'm even farther behind on my journals!  I had a great time visiting everyone.  Richie stayed in WA to babysit our cats!   We arrived at our Birch Bay Thousand Trails RV Resort on August 6. To our Thousand Trails friends, this park is not fancy, but it was nice. There are several sites you can get sattelite. It is in a nice location to explore the North Cascades National Park and Vancouver, Canada. We spent Aug. 11 in the North Cascades National Park. The Mt. Baker Hwy (HWY 542) has some really pretty scenery for the last few miles. It ends in a parking area with a view of Mt. Baker and a hiking trail to the top of a mountain that gives you a 360 degree view of Mt. Baker and surrounding mountain ranges. The trail was very narrow and steep in one area and we hiked through some snow, but the view at the top was worth it.  Mt. Baker is awesome as you will see in the pictures. We rode our bikes for 25 miles one day along Puget Sound and out onto a long peninsula. We also went on a rough mountain bike trail one day. I hit a rock on the trail wrong and fell sideways into a bunch of thick bushes. When Richie came back to see what was wrong I was lying there laughing with my top half completely covered by the bushes with the bicycle lying on top of me. Needless to say, I needed help getting up. I’m really glad we forgot our camera that day! (No injuries, by the way). We went to Vancouver, Canada for a day, which I will put into another journal with pictures of our trip up there. There were wild blackberries everywhere, so I had lots of fun picking them and of course, eating them on ice cream afterwards! Next journal: Vancouver, Canada (P.S.  I was finally able to add my pictures yesterday, Oct. 7.  Check them out!)