We arrived in Blaine, Washington on the US/Canda border on Monday afternoon, and we have been continuing to track the EUROGRACHT's progress up the coast.  She's due into Victoria, BC tomorrow (the 11th) and we're scheduled to be offloaded first on Sunday morning.  We can't wait!!!

To backtrack a bit... after our adventures in Idaho we headed across the north end of Oregon to visit Robin's cousin Mike and his family in Hood River.  We traversed some big green mountains, crossed through more farmland, and then descended into the Columbia River gorge - wow!  We never realized how beautiful and dramatic the gorge is, and how wide the river runs so far from the sea.  There are a number of locks and dams and hydro power stations along the river's course, and we saw tugs pushing large barges.

The town of Hood River reminded us of some of the Maine coastal towns - picturesque, perched on a hill above the water with interesting shops and cafes.  The tall evergreen trees on the hillsides give way to orchards of apples and pears as the road turns south away from the river gorge.  What a gorgeous area!  There are clear views of the snow-covered Mt. Adams to the north, and Mt. Hood to the south. 

Robin's cousin lives on a big piece of property with evergreen trees, wild blackberries, grouse, a pond full of very vocal frogs, red winged blackbirds, and a few pairs of pheasants.  The male pheasants seemed to respond to a neighbor's roosters, and they put on a show of dancing and singing every morning.  It was wonderful to reconnect with family and to share stories from our childhood - we had a lot of laughs! 

The area also boasts some stunning waterfalls, with a nice hiking trail that connects many of the falls, culminating in Multnomah Falls.  Wonderful!

After a brief stop in downtown Seattle to pick up a few more parts for our heating system, we arrived in Blaine.  Actually, we accidentally went to Canada.  Briefly.

We were trying to find a grocery store so we could pick up some things for the friends we are visiting with.  Jim searched for "grocery store" in the car's GPS, and found a nice store 2 miles away... except that he didn't notice the store was in Canada.  We jumped back on the highway and found ourselves at the Canadian border gates, with no possibility of a U-turn.  Good thing we had the passports handy.  The border guard was pretty nice about it, and they checked us into Canada and directed us to a U-turn so we could wait in line to go through the US border gates.  A little adventure!

We visited with friends we met in Marathon this winter, and waited until today when it was time to head to Victoria to meet our ship, as well as see Jim's dad who happens to be making a port call in Victoria on a cruise ship tomorrow.

It's only just beginning to sink in that we're "here".  I think it will feel real when we're back aboard our home on Sunday.

We have really been enjoying our exploration in the west, and we seem to be most drawn to places with unique landscapes.  Keeping with that theme, we left Salt Lake and drove up into Idaho to hike in Craters of the Moon National Monument. 

The Snake River plain runs across southern Idaho and is mostly flat terrain in an otherwise mountainous state.  The 52-mile long Great Rift is a series of deep fissures in the earth which are volcanically active.  About 15,000 years ago lava oozed out of the ground (as opposed to erupting from a volcano formation) and created a huge plain of lava that was active as recently as 2000 years ago.  The size of this flow is mind-boggling!

There are a number of National Parks in southern Utah, which is a testament to the amazing formations and shapes that can be found across the state: Arches, Canyonlands (with three different entrances and major districts), Bryce Canyon with its colorful "hoodoos", and Zion with its towering cliffs.  Bryce and Zion are part of the "Grand Staircase" which continues down to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  It is an amazing and magical region well worth extended exploration.
Nearly across the road from Arches National Park with its red rock fins and arch formations is the entrance to Canyonlands National Park's "Island in the Sky" district - a land of pinnacles and buttes cut by the Colorado River.  We didn't have time to venture into Canyonlands, but we were able to stop at the oddly-named Dead Horse Point State Park near Moab, which offers a stunning vista 2000' above Canyonlands and the Colorado River.  This view looks more southeastward with the snowcapped La Sal mountains in the distance.

And this is our favorite view over a horseshoe bend in the Colorado, with miles of dramatic territory begging to be explored.  We are standing at about 6000' above sea level to get this view, but remember it all used to be an inland sea about 300 million years ago!

You may notice that there isn't a lot of vegetation (an understatement!), because this is the high desert and this area averages about 10" of rain per year.  But the plant life that does exist is hardy and adaptable to live in this environment.  And it is also beautiful, like this indian paintbrush flower.

Between Colorado and southern Utah we've had some great animal sightings - mule deer, elk, buffalo, cottontail rabbit, chipmunks, lizards, as well as a lot of hawks, including peregrine falcons, kestrels, and harriers.

After savoring the dramatic view we had to keep making miles and head into Salt Lake City to visit friends.  We lived in Salt Lake for 2 years in the early 90's to go to grad school at the University of Utah, and we really loved the area and the people there.

The beautiful Wasatch Mountains still had a healthy layer of snow, though the ski areas closed recently.  The hard-core people were still hiking up to enjoy a few runs though.

We had to drive up the canyon and visit our old favorite ski area - Brighton, and Jim was a good sport about posing on the snow.  And yes, I did throw a snowball at him!

 

On the way back down the canyon we saw a coyote in the woods - pretty cool!  We had a marvelous time catching up with our friends, and seeing the Olympic cauldron and all the growth in the area.

 

300 Million years ago part of the western US was an inland sea, covered in salt water.  We can remember hiking in parts of southern Utah where the ground is littered with small shells as far as the eye can see.  The salt left behind when that inland sea evaporated created salt domes that were eventually covered by dirt and debris from wind and floods, cementing into a cap of rock over the ages.  Between the unstable salt domes and geologic faults, the land collapsed in places and was uplifted in others.  Further shaping was done by water and wind, eroding the sandstone rock into freestanding fins, and some of those fins developed arches and windows.  That is the story of the amazing shapes in Arches National Park in Utah - one of our favorite Parks.

As our roadtrip across country continues, we headed from New Mexico into southwestern Colorado to visit Mesa Verde National Park.  Jim had never been there before, and I was there once with my brother and parents about 27 years ago - with lots of happy memories. 

We are thoroughly enjoying our adventures as we drive across the country.  We've been making good progress and we're actually in Twin Falls, Idaho this morning, but it will take several entries to catch up on some of the wonderful places that we've stopped to explore along the way.  As of this morning, the Eurogracht is off the Baja Peninsula, making her way to Ensenada, Mexico.

After enjoying a day of art museums and galleries around Santa Fe, we headed to the badlands of New Mexico to hike in the Bisti Wilderness - a Bureau of Land Management area.  It is not widely known and has few visitors, but we fell in love with the strange colors and utterly surreal landscapes, changing at every turn.

We're temporarily homeless while ADVENTURES makes her way up the Pacific coast, but we're trying to make good use of the chance to see some new as well as familiar places as we drive across the US.

After spending time with friends in Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Jupiter our next stop was Clearwater, Florida to see Jim's dad and some other friends.  What better way to bid farewell to sunny Florida than to zip around on Segways through Fort DeSoto Park?  We saw lots of birds and enjoyed a picnic lunch by the beach.  Remind me again why we're leaving the balmy breezes and palm trees and our friends behind?

One day we hope to transit the Panama Canal on our own bottom, but in the meantime it's still very cool to see ADVENTURES make the trip one way or another.  As we're driving across country we've been watching for the EUROGRACHT (our ship) on marinetraffic.com.  Here is one more photo of our boat being loaded on the 450' EUROGRACHT a week ago in sunny Palm Beach, FL - she looks so tiny.

The EUROGRACHT popped into range on marinetraffic.com as she approached the Panama Canal yesterday morning, and we kept checking to see when she entered the Canal so we could catch a glimpse of ADVENTURES on the Panama Canal's web cams. It looked like the ship anchored to wait for the Pilot, and we couldn't tell how long the wait would be.  The ship's position didn't update for many hours, until we finally saw her transiting Gatun Lake (in the middle of the Canal) late last night.  We missed seeing her on the Atlantic-side (Gatun) web cam in daylight, but we stayed up very late to watch her come through the Pacific-side locks at Miraflores.  It was dark and the Canal's lights made a harsh glare on the web cam, but we could clearly see the EUROGRACHT entering the first of the two Miraflores locks, with a big load of boats on her deck.

There are many stories and photos from this winter season in Marathon that we want to catch up on, but that will be the topic for later blog entries.
The big news to report is that ADVENTURES has been safely loaded aboard the 450' Dutch freighter EUROGRACHT in the Port of Palm Beach for her journey through the Panama Canal and up to Victoria, BC, Canada.  This is the ship approaching Lake Worth inlet.

She's due to arrive in Victoria around May 9th and we're driving across country to meet her and to begin some years of cruising in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
Preparing our only home for a big ocean journey is a daunting task - we worked for about a week to get everything lashed down, stowed, secured, and ready. 
On Wednesday afternoon we drove ADVENTURES to the side of the EUROGRACHT and watched the loadmasters bring lots of heavy straps aboard and then position the wide lifting straps from one of the ship's cranes. 

Divers were in the water to help position the huge lifting straps under the hull and make sure they were clear of the stabilizer fins.  At the last minute we had to lower 6 antennas so they would clear the overhead lifting bar.  Once everything was ready for lifting we boarded a small launch and waited near the ship to watch her get settled on deck.

We had a great cruise into our beloved Florida Keys.  We anchored behind Pumpkin Key next to the very exclusive Ocean Reef Club at the north end of Key Largo so we could jump out to the ocean side of the Keys for the rest of the trip to Marathon.  The path to Hawk Channel is through Angelfish Creek which has notoriously shifting shoals at the mouth.  We had to transit it at the top of high tide, and our reward was a beautiful Keys sunrise as we got to the ocean.

The Keys are about 100 miles long - a chain of islands connected by bridges first built by Henry Flagler for his Overseas Railroad in the early 1900's.  You can see the tractor trailer on this bridge...

No trip to Marathon would be complete without a storm.  We ALWAYS seem to get a little storm just to make things interesting.  This year it was only a series of smaller rain squalls, but they passed very near us and made it a little exciting.  As we approached Sombrero light we could see the closest dark clouds and rain.