while driving, the new 765T decided that it would be a good time for it to "update its firmware." So, it says "updating firmware 1%" ... it says this a few times. I turned it off (I'm DRIVING and I need it to navigate...) and it seemed to be back to normal. A while later it happens again, and then I get the
"Update Complete - OK" dialog. clicked OK, and it turns itself off. Never to be heard from again. Dark. Nothing. Lifeless BRICK. I can't believe it BRICKED ITSELF WHILE DRIVING and ON THE ROAD. Spent 55 minutes on the phone (mostly waiting for a human) for them to tell me "uh, yeah its one of many reports we started receiving today." So Joy.

Garmin in their infinite wisdom decided it might *NOT* be a good idea to ship me another identical unit... so it looks like I will be getting an upgrade to a 800 series. Will see how well THIS brick works when it arrives next week...

Garmin Firmware Programmers: You're FIRED.

Got up at 7AM and fished off the shore of the lake for a bit, had as much luck as yesterday. It was quiet until about 8am. Sheesh don’t people got stuff to do on a Sunday morning. Got out the soldering iron and melted all up and down the seam of the leaking shower head, sealing it nicely. Ugly as sin, but it now doesn’t spray all over when it gets used… Went on an excursion today to visit Camano island state park, just for a day trip. Nice drive through farmland, wetlands, mudflats and the like. Perfect weather for yet a third day yields 73 degrees and sunny. *ALL* of the snow-capped peaks of the Puget Sound area mountains are visible today through the hazey air. Quite a treat. Nice little summer preview today, without the heat (thank GOD). Fished off the dock for a few minutes at the park as I obtained a new overdose of vitamin D. I was chased down by a large and lovely, yet heavily armed, member of the state wildlife enforcement division, who requested to see a “license.” Fortunately I had remembered to put it in my tackle box and I showed it to her, but that seemed to satisfy her as she left to pursue other perps. Repeated requests to cuff me went unfulfilled… Child One and Mommy are off to play at the park while I construct a new waste dump hose assembly. Cheap crappy hose we bought last year sprung leaks already, that’s only 9 months. Ugh. Where’s that beer..

Plumbing seems to have held up (more or less). Shower head leaks from the seam when the water pressure is on. Cheap Chinese plastic crap. Went fishing in the morning for an hour, didn’t catch anything except lake weed. Might have been too late, the guy that was there had a whole string of fish. Plus its so dang shallow that its probably only 9’ deep out 100 feet anyway and I bet the lake weed is 6 feet high. Makes fishing from shore a pain in the butt anyway. Next time I am bringing my inflatable boat. Whilst trying to hook up the laptop to the VGA port on the TV, and I knocked the laptop off the TV stand and it crashed to the floor, injuring the front right plastic piece. It was still playing Mythbusters for my son as I picked it up. I snapped the speaker grille plastic back in place, and with a little super glue, it should be fine. I tried like hell to light a camp fire, but it just would NOT catch. Even under the blue flame of a propane torch.

Campfire: FAIL.

Need more beer. Fell fast asleep on the couch in about 17 seconds.

Got the trailer parked and leveled. Yay. Beer is cold Yay.

Shower plumbing: FAIL. Nap: FAIL. <Sigh>

When we turned on the water, the shower valve handle shot out, squirting water all over the tiny bathroom. The plastic threaded piece under the handle that holds the valve into the fixture had broken and allowed the handle and valve to be ejected once there was pressure in the system. A trip into Marysville (WalMart) yielded a tube of superglue which fixed the failed handle valve’s plastic part, and thus I was able to repair the plastic valve and restore water service to the trailer again. Of course, the shower head handle now leaked water from a crack in its cheap design, so electrical tape was my friend in this repair. Cheap plastic crap didn’t even last until the second year.

OK, now it’s time to EAT. Hmmm… Costco has both gas and Meat… mmmmm.

Grilled raw meat over open fire. MMM Meat. Fire good. Chicken and rice… still can’t figure out how to grill the rice though, dangit.

Cranked up the old school ROCK N ROLL. Jethro Tull, ACDC, Stones, Beatles, Foghat, lots of classics… woot! Several hours of ripped internet radio fits on a 256MB SD card that plugs in to the stereo. BTW what’s a “CD” again?

Son and wife are playing frisbee with the other kids.

Now its time for shower and bed. It’s a good thing we have a working water system with hot water again…

We hitched up the trailer and headed east on highway 2, drove up across Stevens pass and then North along the West shore of lake Entiat, and about a third of the way up the West shore of Lake Chelan to the 25-Mile Creek State park where we met with my wife's parents. They brought their fifth-wheel trailer, and we got adjacent sites.

It was pretty warm the days we were there. It was a bit too warm for me, so I grabbed a book and a chair and went over to the creek and put my bare feet on a rock in the stream to read and keep cool. I did only a little bit of fishing but didn't catch anything. Tried fishing from the bulkhead when it was in the shade, but that shade didn't last long. I actually saw one trout swimming around near the docks, but he wasn't hungry apparently. The water in this lake is very very clear. Lake Chelan is over 50 miles long, and the deepest part is over 1500 feet.

We pumped up the inflatable boat, and I took the family out for a little trip around the bays on the lake near the park.


on Monday morning, we went down to the dock at Fields Point,


and picked up the Lady of the Lake boat for a three-hour ride uplake to the remote village of Stehekin. This little town is only accessible by boat, either private boat or the ferry service on the Lady of the Lake. I think the name may mean "you can't get there from here." There are two boats that service these small lake towns, the fast boat and the slow boat. We got the slow boat. Three hours each way, with an hour and a half in Stehekin, made for a really long day... A boat ride on the lake is nice, but the view is pretty much the same the entire way. It was fun, but after 7 hours, it felt good to get back to the dock and go back to camp.

We were also treated to some very nice sunsets over the mountains above the lake.


Finally it was time to go home, and we decided to stop at the Rocky Reach Dam at the South end of lake Entiat. This is a very nice facility with a park, playground, Northwest museum, visitors' center, and a nice fish ladder for watching the salmon and steelhead migrate back up the river.


I was really impressed with the well-kept grounds, the nice play structures, and family-friendly area. This may be an overlooked stop or an out-of the way destination, but we had fun and would definitely stop there again if we were passing through.


It was a long drive up to 4000 feet and over the mountain pass towing the giant trailer, but it was nice to get away for a few days. Next time though I think we'll avoid the mountain passes and hot weather and keep to the West side of the state.

This year for our annual Canada trip, we decided to venture not far from the border. The cost of fuel towing the trailer to the far reaches of the planet is now doubly prohibitive. While we complain about $4.30 gas here in Seattle, the Canadians are paying C$6.00 for theirs. A dollar and a half per liter in Vancouver was the norm.

We stayed in a "RV resort" campground in Hazelmere. I thought it was rather interesting that there were campers of all sorts, tent campers, RV campers, trailers, and class-A motorhomes. There were also lots of fifth-wheel trailers and small mobile homes that apparently are for permanent residents there. I have never seen permanent residents at a campground before, mixed in with the campers. Must be some kind of thing they are doing to exploit a loophole and avoid taxes I figure. There was a duck pond, a playground, and a small stream that runs through the park. It was a rather large place, probably about 50 acres I would guess. Lots of grassy areas too. The park was hosting a dog show for the weekend when we arrived. They had wifi, and we had a full hookup for the trailer, so it was rather civilized. However, my son and I were chased out of the hot tub rather rudely by one of the volunteer staff there. True we were breaking the rule on the spa because my son was under the age limit, but I didn't think the response was appropriate. So, other than a bit of attitude from the people, the place was fairly reasonable. It wasn't cheap though. $42 US a night for the full hookup spot (1.01C$ = 1.00US$ this trip). The weak dollar and the price of fuel certainly made this Canada trip the most expensive one we've ever taken - and that includes one where we drove all the way to Banff several years ago.

Vancouver is an interesting city. The building architecture and the city layout is different from any other city I have ever seen. High-rise apartment buildings are the norm in this downtown city. Whereas in downtown Seattle, about half of the high-rise buildings are residential and half are offices. The buildings are on average 30-50 floors I would guess. There are a lot of cars and traffic is heavy around rush hour. I can't imagine that there are more people that live in downtown Seattle than downtown Vancouver, but that's what it says online. It just seems to me that there are about 10x more apartments in Vancouver than in Seattle.

This year, we decided to visit Stanley Park - a very large park right on the edge of downtown Vancouver. We drove to the park and found a parking spot near the aquarium. There is a playground, and lots of other places to sit and relax in the park. The weather was good for us, just at 70F (21C) and bright blue skies. We hiked around the park for a while, and my son played on the playground equipment. We walked over to what we thought was the teahouse restaurant, looking for high tea. However, contrary to the brochures, the restaurant gone out of business and was taken over by a brew pub. Apparently it is seasonal, and we were there for its opening day. Food was OK, but prices seemed quite high. Don't think I'll need to go back to that one. We took the free shuttle bus around the park's outside loop road, trying to see all the sights from the different vantage points the park offers. It's a rickety old street car type bus, so it rattles pretty good. But it's free and fairly convenient.

I opted out, but the rest of the family decided to go to the Vancouver Aquarium there in the park, to see the sights below the bay. The beluga whales were the main attraction, and of course my son thought those were pretty cool. The pregnant beluga whale Qila had just given birth to a baby female whale a few days before our visit, so there were lots of people there to see the newborn calf. The aquarium has good web coverage with live whale cams, so they are fun to watch.

We drove out to Point Roberts, a small bastion of Washington state on a peninsula, south of Vancouver. The only way one can drive to this small Washington town is through Canada. It always sounded like fun, so this year we did it. We stopped for lunch to watch the orca whales playing in the sound. We didn't get a lot of great pictures, because they were about a quarter mile off shore, and we didn't have access to a boat. We did see a couple of them jump out of the water though, so that was fun. It was kind of interesting to see some of the Canadian homes that back up to the border. Some had hedges or fences that were just on the Canada side of the border, and others didn't have anything except a lawn that reached down to the small drainage ditch that was just on the US side of the border. It is interesting that there is no border fence, and only a marble obelisk every half mile or so to note the boundary.

All in all, it was a pretty good trip. The orca whales were a nice surprise bonus. Canada is definitely an interesting place, just a little bit different. It's nice to get out for our little change of pace every year, but it sure is nice to come home too.