another whoops

Luke realized that I forgot to mention another thing that happened in Haines Junction. We had been driving down one of the roads just outside of town in the evening and it was dark. As we passed an intersection we saw a truck camper on its side on the opposite side of the road, with no sign of the truck it belonged to. We turned around and as we approached we could then see that the truck had fallen into the deep ditch beside the road (it was about a 20 foot drop). The truck's headlights were still on and it was on its side as well. You could see that the truck had been going in the opposite direction, then did a tight 180 degree turn causing the camper to fly off and the truck to land in the ditch.
Luke went down with a flashlight--there was no one in the truck but it smelled of gasoline, there was lots of blood and there were many empty beer cars strewn about.  We couldn't tell if they had been rescued or if they had wandered off somewhere, injured. As Luke was calling out and looking for evidence of where they might have gone, a guy in a truck came by and started putting up pylons. It turns out the police had already been there and he had been called to section it off for the safety of the other drivers. Scary stuff!

We're in Castlegar BC waiting around while our truck gets yet another repair. This time the radiator needs replacing. It was slowly leaking coolant and it turns out there's a crack in the plastic. Thankfully Luke noticed the temp gauge starting to spike as we drove uphill and he sorted it out well enough for us to get to a mechanic before any damage was done. It's very mountainous country around here, so we could have been in trouble if Luke didn't catch it when he did.

After leaving the Olympic Peninsula we spent a day in Seattle. We hunted down a bike shop so I could buy some new shoes (which I love!!) and then went to a bike area called Duthie in Issaquah. Duthie is a super fun bike skills area that is very well built--I was super impressed. It's good for people like me who need to practice skills since they are set up in a safe (well, as safe as that stuff gets) progressive manner.
It was a bit strange to be back in a big city again. It was especially weird to see people glued to their phones again.

We then drove to Bellingham, just south of border from Vancouver. It's a wonderful place (except they have a lot of bad drivers). I went to a fabulous yarn store and we rode some fabulous trails.

We headed east after that, into the mountains towards Twisp.  We did a ride called the Goat Creek trail that started a bit higher up of a mountain in the Okanogan National Forest. That side of the mountains is high desert so it was sandier and drier than what I had gotten used to on the west side. As we rode we came across a number of cows grazing in the area. Some just stared at us, others ran way, while one made very annoyed noises as we went by...but they left us alone.
That night we slept near a small lake just outside of Winthrop WA. We could hear coyotes howling through the night and the next morning we watched two raptors hunting other birds. An older couple drove up with a boat and told us that a wildfire (started by lightning) tore through the area a couple months before and traveled 30 miles past. They thought the lake was mostly dead from the ash, but they were going to try their luck fishing regardless.
We couldn't get to the trail Luke wanted to ride because of closed roads due to road work, so we drove to Rossland instead. We had a lovely swim in one of the lakes in Osoyoos BC on the way (it was hot!!). We'll be going back to Rossland so Luke can ride the Seven Summit trail (when am I going to be in good enough shape to climb 3000 ft already??) once the truck is back from surgery. I'm sure there will be trails I can ride there too :)