First Day - Centrailia, WA

Well, we made it to our first day destination, Midway RV Park in Centrailia, Washington, safe and sound, but Paulette and I both agree this was probably the most difficult travel day we've had while rv'ing. It began this morning when I was pulling the 5th wheel out of our driveway. Despite us spending several hours on Monday shovelling snow, I still wasn't able to make a wide enough turn to clear a three foot snowbank at the end of the driveway. Paulette and I had to dig frantically for about 15 minutes before we finally got out with just a couple of inches to spare.

We still had plenty of time though to get to Duke Point and catch the 10:15am ferry for Tswassen.We've had a few weird snowfalls here in Cowichan Bay over Christmas - here's a picture of what it looked like after one of the storms:

From Heading South

After the driveway incident, we thought we were pretty much in the clear and things looked great when the U.S. Border Agent waved us right through with just a "have a nice trip" - that was great as it was about 1:00pm and we looked in good shape to arrive at Midway RV Park around 3:30pm - not to be! We hit bumper to bumper traffic near Everett, and then the monsoon rains started. It was raining so hard that the truck's windshield wipers could hardly keep up even on the fastest setting.

The bumper to bumper traffic continued right through Seattle, sometimes as much as seven lanes wide, all the way to Tacoma - it was just crazy! We didn't get to Tacoma until 6:15 and then finally made it to Centrailia at 7:00pm - 3 1/2 hours later than we had planned. It was a miserable drive but at least we didn't get banged up in all the traffic as it was very, very hectic.

By the time we arrived at Midway RV Park, the rain had let up and it was quite warm - 11C, so that was nice. But, we had to setup in the dark and that wasn't much fun at all. We managed to get everything hooked up and working properly including cable tv and wifi so we felt good about that.

Hopefully, tomorrow will go a bit easier as it is only a five hour drive down I-5 to the Seven Feathers RV Resort in Canyonville, Oregon. There is a flood warning issued for the area we are in now, so who knows - maybe tomorrow will be a worse travel day than today but we certainly hope not!