Driving South

After arriving in Seattle, we were very happy to note that the van started- yay!
But not so happy to note that it needed nearly 900$ of repairs, according to the place we took it to for an oil change- boo!

We called around a few places, and found someplace that could replace a cv boot for much cheaper, so after an evening camped out in a residential neighborhood, and 200$ for a couple of cv boots, we were out of there, out of the constant rain, and gloom that we had flown into. Unfortunately to go south, you had to go up. And when you go up, rain becomes snow. We ended up in a complete white out, and stopped about 20 miles out of Seattle.

At Least it was pretty in the morning

Driving through the snow during the day was a lot easier than at night. Although we did have a close call at Snoqualmie pass, where we decided to try to get gas- at a ski resort. What we didn't realize was as soon as we got of the exit the roads were covered in ice. The vanagon doesn't like ice. Especially when you have to go up hill and turn at the same time- we started sliding sideways, the car in the other lane kept getting closer- Luckily Mike was able to stop us in time, but we were now in the middle of the road, sideways. Some nice friendly snow plow guy, put some dirt under our tires and sent us on our way.

Snoqualmie Pass

One of the negatives of leaving the van in wet and rainy Washington for so long, was that everything was wet and rainy, so everything molded.

Our poor pop-top roof - on the inside

The next days were spent doing a lot of driving. We did a little bit of riding in Kennewick Washington, but it really wasn't very fun- wet and kind of boring. Somewhere along the way, to be honest right now I can't even remember the state, we passed over this great gorge, that was only like 50 feet wide. It was neat cause you didn't see it coming at all.

Big Gorge

Finally when we got into Utah, after Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, it started to warm up a bit.

Driving through Salt Lake City, no wonder they had the Olympics there, look at all those mountains

We decided if the weather was going to cooperate we might as well do a little climbing. We stopped in a little town called Helper UT. Although we were slightly fearful for our lives, some strange looking folks live in Helper, the climbing was pretty good.

and the scenery was fantastic

Next up- adventures in Moab...