Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913

This and That While On Vacation

I decided to take a vacation to visit my granddaughters Lily (11) and Maggie (9) out in Washington and to get out of the smoke from all the fires up in Canada that have inundated Hinsdale recently.

Most of my 12.783 faithful know the problems I have had with cars and pickups since I kilt the Crown Vic and I should have known better, but I did it again. I took an untested 1994 Ford Ranger 4X4 that I had just bought at a farm auction to see what it needs to make itself whole. Remember four years ago I took the Ford half ton I got from my son in Colorado to Washington in the winter and the heater didn’t work very well. Just enough to take the chill off the brass monkey. Then a couple years ago (or was it just last year?) I took the Cadillac on a trip from hell. When it used up three gallons of water to get over Rogers Pass, the idiot light in my head should have kicked on and said

cut your losses, dawg. Turn around and go back home. But that bulb had burned out . . . I continued my trip thinking maybe it was just low on water when I left home. It wasn’t.

The long and the short of that story was that the engine had a blown head gasket and I was very fortunate to get it all the way to Washington and back as it was. I took it to a mechanic out there who removed the radiator, boiled and flushed it out, put in a new thermostat and pronounced her “good to go, dude!”

This trip, as I headed up Rogers Pass I noticed the needle on the ‘getting hot’ gauge creeping slowly toward that little red square in the dial that indicated your tea water is just right. Rogers isn’t a very long climb and with some prudent driving I made it to the top without boiling the engine. I let her cool off and looked in the radiator. It was full. I’m thinkin’ ‘what the hay’? Maybe the gauge is cockeyed.

My two next challenges were Independence Pass and Fourth of July Pass, both in Idaho. (Just to please “Horace Sense” I will say the east side of Independence is in Montana. Gotta be factual, you know.) Anyway, I had to stop twice on the uphill side of both passes to let the engine cool down.

I stopped in Carlton, Washington to see my friends Steve and Sande before tackling my last obstacle which was Washington Pass on the North Cascades Highway – a route you absolutely must take on your next trip to the coast btw. It’s beautimous to say the least.

Once on top, it’s about 70 miles of downhill and into Clear Lake where I found sanctity at the beautiful home of my daughter. 960 miles.

‘Member I mentioned smoke at the top of this story? Well the smoke in the Skagit Valley was ten times worse than what I had left in Hinsdale. Yikes!! There were a dozen small fires burning on the east side of the Cascades, and one on Portage Island in the San Juans. And it continued until I left on Sunday.

I got re-connected with people I hadn’t seen for many aeons. Some as long as 40+ years. My daughters’ aunts and uncle, Glenda, Julie, Gary, Michelle, Cindy and Bev. We had some very precious “remember when” moments as we celebrated Bev’s son Elliot’s graduating from college with a masters in mechanical engineering from Olin College of Engineering.

The party was right downtown Seattle in amongst the tall buildings and homeless folks. It was just at 7pm and there were a bazillion people walking the streets heading to a Mariners baseball game. After getting hopelessly lost (my son-in-law Geoff driving and my daughter Suzanne sitting in the back seat navigating with the aid of Siri), we finally got near the right place and got extremely lucky finding an open parking spot, $15 for 2 hours!, across the street from where we were supposed to be.

It was an intimate party with forty guests. Me wearing the only “real” cowboy hat within a twelve mile radius I suppose. I was introduced to a ‘horse ovarie’ made with a one inch square chunk of raw salmon on a cracker with lettuce and goat cheese. Then came a mixture of something on a small hunk of celery . . . and goat cheese. The closest thing to real food was a BBQ’d pork slider . . . with goat cheese . . . that was quite messy but very good. I foundered myself on them and only spilled a couple drops of BBQ on my shirt.

It was 60 miles of bumper to bumper all the way back to Mt Vernon. I probably saw more cars in that 90-minute drive than there are in the whole town of Hinsdale!!!

I changed the thermostat in the Ford, flushed the radiator on the three-day system, said my goodbyes after several picture taking sessions, loaded my stuff (all except a couple shirts I forgot I had hung up in the closet) and headed out for home.

Snoqualmie Pass loomed ahead and with a modicum of dread and a tbsp full of anxiety, I charged up the hill trying to keep a good pace to allow for good air draft into the engine compartment. There was a light rain/mist falling, which cooled the temp down and I got to the top without incident. Coming out of the Columbia River crossing was a piece of cake and Fourth of July Pass was conquered without getting in the red. Independence Pass was my one stumbling block because there was one-lane traffic on the uphill side, which caused me to lose speed and air draft. I had to stop twice to cool the engine. Rogers, coming up the west side isn’t nearly as steep as the east, so I sailed right up there too even though it was now about 2pm and the outside temp was climbing.

I arrived home to find it just the same as when I left and it seemed like I hadn’t been anywhere at all. You been there, done that?

And that, in part was my trip to Washington. Boring eh?

That’s it for now folks. Thanks for listening.

Sidebar to “Horace Sense” formerly “Paul Harvey”:

Among other things you chided me for my inaccuracies, and rightly so. However I have warned my readers several times in the past that I may not always be just exactly right and that what they read above my signature line should be taken with a grain of salt. Research is not my best forte. It should be and I will strive to do better in the future.

I get my information from the internet, newspapers, TV and people like yourself “Horace”, so here’s my dilemma: Your first letter to the Courier (which wasn’t published) closed with “Paul Harvey. And now you know the rest of the story. Good day.”

What if . . . to keep my facts reliable as you would wish . . . I would have told my readers (you included) that I had received a letter from “the” Paul Harvey with both of his signature lines at the bottom of the letter? Would you have written something like “Hey Virgil, you Dumas. Paul Harvey is dead. Or didn’t you know?”

And . . . I am ignorant enough to use my real name. I have my opinions and sign my name to each of them. I don’t hide behind the cloak of anonymity. On the other foot, you might have to admit to your friends and business associates that you actually read the junk I write. Yikes!!!

 

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