Day 74, Sunday, August 28

This morning, David cooked up a scrumptious salmon casserole, fresh biscuits, and pulled out an assortment of marmalades and preserves. I haven’t eaten this well since Karen Torgerson and the folks from CycleAmerica fed me back at Crater Lake. Thank you very much David and Marcia for sharing your home with me. I will absolutely keep in touch with you two during this trip!
After leaving David and Marcia, I headed down into Seattle through a light rain. No surprise there, right? I decided that I’d go down to the KOA south of Seattle in order to have internet access so I could start making plans with friends for my Chicago trip.
When I got to the KOA and started to set up camp, I made a very unhappy discovery. Yesterday morning, when I was packing up camp, I apparently left my tent’s ground cloth there at the camp site! Mom made the ground cloth for me out of TYVEK material and it is (was?) far higher quality than any ground cloth you could ever purchase in a store. TYVEK, while a bit noise, makes the best ground cloth ever because it's completely water proof and damn near impervious to punctures. Let’s just say that didn’t do much for the cleanliness of my language. On this trip, I’ve developed a procedure for rainy evenings (like this one). I tie up my 9’ x 11’ tarp so I can set up the tent sheltered from the rain, then I move the tarp forward so I have a covered foyer to the tent where I can eat my meals in the dry. It’s worked very well, but isn’t an option when I’ve got to use the tarp as a ground cloth rather than a foyer. The problem with using it for a ground cloth is that all of my dinner-appropriate food requires cooking which isn’t particularly fun when it’s raining and I’ve got no cover. What a pisser. Oh yeah, one more thing, it was blowing so hard that even if I had gotten the camp stove lit, there’s no way I’d have been able to heat up my dinner.
Time for more of the good fortune which has been so prevalent on this trip! As I was standing there, pondering how the heck I was going to feed myself, this couple (John Robin and his wife Susan came by and struck up a conversation. The Robins are in town this weekend in their camper with their two sons and two nephews for two days of back to back baseball games of the Seattle Mariners. They’d come down from Vancouver Island in their camper and were having a wonderful time. When they saw me pondering my dinner options they invited me over to share dinner with them. "I’m afraid all we can offer is Spaghetti, garlic bread, and a cold beer." I don’t see how that warrants an apology. I felt like I should apologize for not being able to bring anything to dinner with me! The Robins were wonderfully entertaining to talk with that evening and invited me to come up to see them when I head up to Vancouver after my trip to Chicago. John also helped me replan my route through the Vancouver Island area to incorporate the best scenic motorcycling roads in the area. My fortune on this trip, just in terms of the people I have met and am sure will continue to meet, leaves me constantly stunned.
Tomorrow, I think I’ll head over and get a campsite onf the West side of the Puget sound in hopes of finding a campsite for slightly less money. $34 per night is a bit steep for what I’d like be paying for tent camping.