Fri, July 4 2008

Hi, it’s Phyllis,
This was an interesting day, or at least we thought it was. Before we left the motel at Langley, the lady there gave us directions to Stanley Park in Vancouver. We decided that would be a valuable stop. In the process of finding this park, we saw China Town (twice). When we arrived at our destination we found it was indeed worth the effort. This was a beautiful place. We could drive clear around the bay, where we saw many sail boats and big yachts. There were lots of people walking, biking, and families as well as tourists taking advantage of the great day . There was a sea wall all the way around and people could walk, bike, and skate on it. We saw some larger ships out in the harbor and just spent some time watching people. But now it was time to move on and find our way through Vancouver. The tolleys run on overhead wires and some of the streets still have the rails down the middle. It is a very busy place and since there was a cruise boat in the harbor, that helped the busyness.
Since we had not heard back from Ila’s friend in Seattle, we decided not to go there so were looking for highway 99 out of town. This proved to be harder than it looked. We followed the highway clear through Vancouver, and out or town and found ourselves at the airport. There was no good place to turn around, so we just drove clear through, watched people departing, and on our way out, surprise, surprise there was 99. We just took the exciting way.
We crossed into the lower 48 at about 1:40 p.m. Guess what we did first thing? Found a Mc Donalds. Yes, they have them in Alaska and Canada, but this was better and even had the dollar menu. We thought the security at the border was the most watched, with cameras, etc. than the previous ones had been. We drove on to Yakima, Washington, where we spent the night. We had supper at a neat diner called, Mel’s. Then we did laundry and went to Wal Mart, where we had a really good view of the local fireworks, from the parking lot. Tomorrow we will have quite a lot of driving, and do plan to visit Linda’s relative on our way. So tune in again tomorrow for further adventures.