Day 75, Monday, August 29

I spent the morning today trying to finalize plans for storing my trailer during my trip to Chicago. Growing up, I spent my summers in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Two pillars of the community, adoptive grandparents to my brother and me, and invaluable friends and advisors to Dad and Mom there in Sapphire, NC were Ray and Jessie Beddingfield. When I sent out my "Need help in Seattle" e-mail a couple of weeks ago, one of the people Mom forwarded the e-mail to was Jessie. Turns out that Ray’s nephew, Archie Beddingfield, lives Northwest of Seattle, in the town of Maple Valley, and he has offered me garage space while I’m in Chicago. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to reach Archie for the last few days to confirm because, as it turns out, he’s been on vacation. After reaching him and getting directions, I headed out under extremely threatening skies to the West side of Puget Sound. By chance I found a nice campsite on the Hood Canal at Kitsap Memorial State Park.