Success, Success, Success, Not, Success, Not

 We actually got up and away by just after 7:30 this morning, fed Miss Travelaire some propane for breakfast at the corner gas station down the road, and made it out to and onto the 9 oclock ferry! (success number 1).  It’s not too far to the Peace Arch border crossing, and there was only a several minute wait.  And after Miss Travelaire was embarrassed by having a big German Shepherd dog sniff around her bottom, and being photographed, and x-rayed by about fifteen hundred cameras, we spent a total of about 30 seconds talking to the border guy before he waved us on. (seccess number 2).  Then a few miles down the road at Bellingham, we stopped in at an AT&T store where the good people there charged us an arm and a leg for a month of data time for our iPad so I can communicate with people in that country up north.  (success number 3).

After all that success, something had to go wrong!  Our GPS quit.  Or at least mostly quit.  Before our trip I downloaded the newest maps onto our GPS.  It turned out the newest maps use a lot more memory and I had to buy a micro-sd card for it to store the maps on.  That went fine, and it indicated they were downloaded successfully.  But, when I went to put in a destination to go to this morning the GPS completely froze!  Nothing would work.  So we may be without our sweet GPS lady giving Miss Travelaire directions.  With all our iPad data though, we are able to use Google Maps for directions.  They are not as good as the GPS lady because they don’t seem to indicate which lane to be in for verious turns and exits.

Miss Travelaire laboured on without Miss GPS, however, and managed to trudge through downtown Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia in fits and starts (even though it wasn’t really rush hour), without getting any scratches or bruises!  (success number 4)

We ended our journey, or so we thought, at Walmart in Chehalis WA, where we did a grocery shopping (we tend not to bring much food across the border), and where we hoped to park for the night.  But that was not to be, they told us there was no overnight parking!  On we went to a rest stop 20 minutes down the road where we should be ok for the night.  (N46 21 08.2, W122 54 30.2)