The great weather here in Arlington continues. Saturday was mostly cloudy and a little cooler with the high in the lower 70s, but it didn’t rain. My daughter, Alana’s, best friend since childhood, Angie Meece, is visiting her parents in Darrington. She reached out to Donna and invited us to stop by on Sunday afternoon.
Sunday was a bright, sunny day, so we put the top down and drove Midget-San up to Darrington – it’s about 30 miles east of Arlington up highway 530. The Meeces’ house is on a beautiful property next to the 6,841-ft. peak of Whitehorse Mountain. When we pulled up to the entrance to their property, we were surprised to find it lined with a number of cars. Obviously something was up.
We pulled to the end of the driveway and parked and found a party! It was a surprise party with two purposes – first was a celebration of the retirement from the Darrington School District of Angie’s mother, Diane. Secondly it was a celebration of Angie’s sister’s graduation from university. Unbeknownst to us, both of Angie’s sisters, Michelle and Lisa, were also visiting.
They wanted to keep the surprise party secret, so they just invited a number of people to stop by for a visit without letting the real deal out. Too bad for us – we ate lunch before driving up only to find a feast was spread. They had a ton of hors d’oeuvres and fresh seafood. Angie’s dad, Mark, also had a keg of beer on tap. We had a good time mingling and I got to visit with many people I haven’t seen in nearly 20 years. I was so caught up in various conversations that I neglected to take any photos!
On Monday, Donna got busy in the trailer taking on one of my tasks. She started re-organizing and getting rid of useless things that I keep hauling around. She’s better at that sort of thing than I am. Alana and Gabi returned from their Hawaii vacation late Monday night.
I spent the morning on Tuesday looking at route options and thinking about where we wanted to be in August. Originally we thought we would head east to Coeur d’Alene, then south through Idaho. After thinking about it for a bit, I thought maybe going west to the Washington coast and making our way south on the Oregon coast may be the way to go. August is the best month weather-wise to travel the coastal northwest and going east would mean high temperatures.
August is also the busiest season for tourism along the coast, so we had to plan ahead and see if we would be able to find RV parks that can accommodate us. We managed to make a couple of reservations and also found boondocking sites that should work along the way. Our plan is to pull out of our extended mooch-docking site here in Alana’s driveway tomorrow.
The first stop will have to be at the dump station – I haven’t dumped our tanks since we arrived here in mid-June. Our course we’ve been using Alana’s bathroom and have been careful about how much waste water we’ve generated. I’m anticipating a somewhat late start as we have to load Midget-San in the trailer for the first time and I’m sure we’ll have to take our time securing the car. We may only go as far as Lacey and spend the night at Cabela’s before we move on to South Bend. We’ll spend a few days there before we head south to Oregon.
Meanwhile, I still have the Verizon data usage mystery. We’ve been consistent in our data usage for several years. We use about 30GB/month and rarely have we gone over our data limit. For the last two months, our data usage – as metered by Verizon – has shot up. Meanwhile, I’m getting e-mails and instant messages from Verizon advising me to switch to one of their new data plans.
I don’t know, but this seems fishy to me. The new plans require me to enter a new contract with Verizon. What accelerated our current data usage? We’ve checked for anything running in the background on our laptops and haven’t found anything.
Today’s high temperature should reach 80 degrees and tomorrow is expected to be even warmer. I think heading for the coast is the right idea. I have much preparation to do today but we’ll get it done. I’m ready for the road again.