Hapless Friday

September 19, 2008
We had every intention of driving to Vancouver, BC today and were 10 miles south of the border when we decided to stop for lunch and gas up. We didn’t want to spend many dollars outside the good ole US of A and boy were we glad we did! We had a typical Denny’s lunch and were looking forward to our adventure across the border, when the couple next to us got up to leave and the woman cried “oh my back” and she looked over at me and told us they had just sat at the border trying to get back in the US for 2 hours! She told us that they heard if you don’t get back before 11:00 a.m. you will be sitting there for a while since the security is much more stringent coming into the US than it is going into Canada. So we decided to just go to the border, take a couple of pictures and come on back to Tacoma and get ready for our trek into Oregon tomorrow. Well, one thing we have to say about Seattle traffic. It sucks. Atlanta traffic seems like going through Bolingbroke compared to this crazy town. The people drive like maniacs for one thing. We saw a dude in a Beamer try to cut in front of an F250 (the big ole honking pickup) and the truck just pulled up and the guy in the Beamer ran into his side! Hello, F250 vs. Beamer??? How stupid can you get? I think these folks need a little sunshine. It has drizzled and has been overcast the whole time we’ve been in the area, but actually it feels pretty good (70 degrees!) but I don’t think I would like it all the time. It is like this for 10 months out of the year and they have an average of 60 plus inches of rain per year. Yikes! But everything is beautiful and green and lots of flowers. Please let me give another sidebar about a cool doughnut shop here. There were two guys who wanted to open a doughnut shop in downtown Seattle because they had this great recipe for hand made doughnuts. They went to a salvage yard and found a neon sign from a defunct business whose name was “Top Spot”. As they made their way back to downtown Seattle with their prize, the “S” fell off the sign and disintegrated on the interstate. These guys were undaunted by this event and proudly named their doughnut shop the “Top Pot” and their doughnuts are to die for. We weren’t able to go to the Top Pot in person, but as most of you know Starbucks was founded here and they carry Top Pot doughnuts to go with their excellent coffees and teas. We stopped at a Starbucks on our way back from the Canadian border and yes, they had Top Pot doughnuts, but only the glazed chocolate ones and I had read that the plain, no glaze ones are the best. We are going to stop at Starbucks on our way out of Tacoma in the a.m. and hopefully I can snag a plain, no glaze one. Our plan for tomorrow is to get to Portland for lunch and a side trip to Powell’s Bookstore, the county’s largest and where I order books that are out of print that I can’t get at Barnes & Noble. After that we plan on going to the Oregon coast and settling in at Lincoln City. On Sunday we plan on visiting the “Big Trees” in NE California and hopefully make Sacramento on Monday.