Day 74. Whidbey.

One of the challenges of RV travel is finding campgrounds where and when you want them. The challenge is greater in the summer, of course, especially on weekends – also near large metro areas and big-draw areas like the OR coast. Many popular public parks that take reservations are fully booked many weeks ahead.
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On our first leg, AZ to MN, we reserved nearly all campsites in advance. From MN to AK, we winged it all the way and found only one campground fully booked. We winged it again on the AK/WA drive, leg 3, with no problem. Now, on leg 4 (WA/AZ), we’re having some difficulty finding available sites.
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We spent 2 hours in the library yesterday, researching and booking sites in WA/OR for the next few weeks – mostly successful, still have a few dates to fill. We are now both confident that we didn’t miss our calling to become travel agents.
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It’s been chilly here at night, 52 at 5:30 AM today. It seldom gets real warm in Pacific NW coastal areas, stays maybe 15 degrees cooler than inland areas, and thus a popular escape from inland hot spells. Our blood is still AZ thin, so it feels chillier to us.
Today’s agenda is drop Ranger at groomer, play a round of par-3 golf, and tour the southern part of the island. Trish lived on Whidbey for awhile and knows the area well; I’ve only been here a time or two, about 100 years ago.
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The smart phone hasn’t made me any smarter after all. In fact I feel downright stupid. I’ve gotta spend a block of time online researching how to do various functions. Yeah, I can make and receive calls and email but the rest of it is a puzzle inside a conumdrum wrapped in an enigma - or whatever my good bud Winston said.

Day 72. South Whidbey Island State Park, WA

We pulled out of Anacortes at 8:45 AM yesterday for a 9:30 appointment in Burlington to have a supply line toilet leak fixed under the EDGE warranty, which expires this week. Then we went to Costco for cheap gas and to look at smart phones, then back to the Anacortes PO to pick up forwarded mail (no new edition of The Mail Seekers; it was there in 2 days), then an hour’s drive south to our campground.
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What the hell’s a smart phone, you ask? It’s a cell phone that has online and GPS capabilities, allowing you to check/send email, check weather forecasts, do google searches – pretty much anything you do online with a computer. Will I be (even) smarter when I get the phone, you ask? Oh yeah! Albert Einstein is rolling over in his grave at the very thought of it.
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Actually, the main reason I’m getting it is to enable me to connect to the internet while traveling when cell phone service is available but wifi is not. The phone serves as a wifi hotspot when connected to a computer. When I’m at home I spend about 2 hours a day on the computer: email, banking, investments, taxes, travel and campground research, and now the blog. With the phone, I can take care of business while Trish is driving, and we’re not forced to stay in crowded, overpriced private campgrounds just because they have wifi. Very few public campgrounds are wifi equipped.
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The weather was cruddy, raining when we pulled into camp but it’s supposed to improve by Thursday. We’re here for 4 nights. Today, Trish will be visiting a friend who lives nearby while I take care of online business at the library. The next couple days we’ll hike, play golf, sit by the campfire and mellow out. Life’s a bitch.
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This park is on the west side of the island, bordering Admiralty Inlet (Puget Sound). It has a few trails, lots of ferns and slugs, and is heavily wooded. Some of the trees, firs and cedars mostly, are huge; one of the big cedars is 500 years old.