Wednesday July 13, Blueslide, Pend Oreille, WA

Woke at 4.30 this morning with a start to the sound a plane directly overhead, about 20 feet above the RV…well it sounded like that. For about an hour the plane kept making sweeps over the area and it wasn’t till we were leaving that we found out that it was spraying for moquitoes. The huge snowfalls over the winter have meant that there are large areas still under water and now that the warm weather is here the mosquitoes are breeding prolifically. They certainly found me last night!

We were driving through Riverside and noticed a Western Shop that we initially thought was closed. Heard western music so investigated and discovered one of the biggest western outfitting stores we have seen, just so surprised to see it in this town that probably only had another 5 shops in it. They had racks of western boots, all colours, patterns and designs and more western shirts and jeans than you could imagine. Evidently people come from all over to shop there, even coming down from Canada. You never know what you might find in these small towns off the highway.

We meandered our way north to the old town of Republic, stopping just out of town at a farmside stall selling cherries and noticed another Born Free RV stopped there. There are so few of these in the US that we all like to meet the people driving them and find out the history of their van. They were a lovely couple from Burlington, not far from Sherry and Terry’s and had owned theirs for 5 years and like us, just love it. After a long chat with them we bought a huge pack of cherries, quite a bit bigger than our 2 litre ice cream container for $6. These are the Rainier variety, one of the early ones and they are a yellowy red colour and have such great flavour. Washington is known across the states for growing great cherries.

We took the Sherman Pass east across to Kettle Falls, an excellent road climbing to 5575 feet through the forest. It was quite open though as a huge fire had devastated the area 20 years ago.

Stopped in Kettle Falls which is on the Northern End of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River. Saw a number of house boats tied up and ended up having a long chat with the lady running the rental operation. She took us aboard one which was 5 metres wide and 20 metres long, with a great living area and 3 bedrooms downstairs and a great deck upstairs. Impressed with the slide from the upper deck into the water….maybe Wakarua needs one! There were about 5 boats at the dock and she said 10 were out on hire.

Continued on east through the Colville National Forest and intended staying in one of their parks on a lake, but found them to have a large population of mosquitoes. Continued on and found a wonderful spot on the wide Pend Oreille, a river that flows into the Columbia. Very peaceful and no sign of mossies. Drinks tonight with neighouring campers Jan and Mark, from Seattle, sitting around the campfire.