October 2 - Day 2 - Leaving Seattle

OK. It was a Big Learning Day. I stayed with my son in Seattle the first night of the trip. In the morning Nicodemus, a.k.a. Magic by his friends (does that make me the source of magic?), was helping me acquaint myself with a new-to-me laptop that has a little more umph than Buck’s YouTube watcher laptop. His partner, Winter, and he sent me off about noon heading East. 

My second big lesson was…always tank up at the beginning of the day. When the little gas pump lit up as I was chugging up a mountain, I took the first exit hoping for a nearby gas station. Ten miles later, I finally found one ($7.59/gal!!!) in Issaquah. A little nerve-wracking when you don’t know how much gas there is left when the little light comes on. Next time, I think I’ll stay on the freeway and take an exit with a visible gas station.

Third lesson… review the roads you’re gonna take! Being a gypsy meandering still needs looking ahead. My first stop was to be the Ginko Petrified Forest State Park. There was a sign on the freeway, saying something about a bridge being at out in Vantage, where the park is located. Little did I know, the detour would require driving 20 minutes on back roads, then sitting in a long line of traffic on a narrow, two-lane road for two hours to get to the turn off for the park.

Even though I was tested in many ways, I still managed mostly to maintain my cool. I did yell at the long road to the gas station, but I made it safely here to Ginko by 5:30 p.m. I will be visiting the park tomorrow morning. Looks like I have to backtrack 20 miles to the freeway on the detour. FYI, the park is only about 2 or 3 miles off of I-90, if the bridge wasn’t out in Vantage.