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Hi all, I'm so far behind in this diary business, my last month has been so jam packed with activities and also internet here in the US and Canada isn’t that cheap. In Seattle I found one place that charged $USD12 ($AUD24) an hour, and the norm was around $USD6! Bit of a difference from places like Ecuador where it was 75 US cents. Especially now that I’m nearing the end of my trip, and my money supply, I’d rather spend 12 dollars on 6 ice creams than 1 hour at a computer :o) Anyway, I left Colorado and flew to Seattle in Washington which is the most North West state of the USA, not including Alaska. Sharon, who Nick and I befriended on our Antarctica cruise earlier this year, picked me up from down town and took me back to the place she's housesitting on Bainbridge Island. The ferry we took to get there was like an ocean liner, a mini city. The ride is only about 35 minutes long, but the ferry has about 4 or 5 stories, including a level for vehicles. The place that Sharon is housesitting is like a castle. A 10 minute drive from the ferry dock in Shazza's truck and we drive down a massive driveway, past a couple of other houses and a massive garden area, we park in the circular drive outside the double car park. In the front enterance hall is a massive abstract granite sculpture, roughly the dimentions of a small car. Behind it is a free standing glass brick wall which provides the huge lounge area with some privacy. The floor is polished wood in the enterence and corridor and white carpet everywhere else. The massive lounge area melds into the kitchen dining area and on the far side is all windows and glass sliding doors overlooking the bay. The main bedroom is huge, the walk in wardrobe the size of my entire bedroom back home, and the bathroom has 3 doors accessing it. The toilet room had both a toilet and a personal urinal, which I believe is something that many males aspire to having. Anyway, I was in awe of this place, even though it wasn't really to my taste decor wise. It took us a lazy days driving and stopping and staying overnight at one of Sharons friend's places before we reached Mt Rainier National Park which lies just outside of the Seattle-Tacoma region. The park is based around the still active volcano, Mt Rainier. According to scientific studies and historical records this volcano erupts about every 500 years and is due for another erruption any time now. The small town where Sharon used to own a house, will be the first residential area to be destroyed by the eruption, with an estimated 15 metre wall of mud spewed over it. The next day was hot and sunny, and in shorts and t-shirt we set out on our hike up the snow covered mountain to Camp Muir, the base camp for climbers who intend to reach the summit. I can't remember what altitude the camp is, but the hike from the carpark to the camp ascends 1,400 vertical metres. Even though it was the begining of summer, the volcano was still covered in a lot of snow from base to summit. The hike wasn't hard at all, but it was a good hike. All we had were our day packs, and we passed and were passed by many hikers carrying up their skis and snowboards for the journey down. The views both infront of us and behind us were beautiful. As we reached base camp, it became quite chilly so we didn't spend much time up there. The steep climb back down was not an easy one. My Gortex boots are designed to be water resistant but they aren't any longer, and we were running down in slushy, sun melted snow and had no gaters or anything to keep the cold ice out. I had to stop a couple of times to empty my shoe and thaw my extemely frozen and pained feet out. Sharon was wearing new boots and had a huge red raw sore on the back of each ankle. We'd brought a plastic garbage bag each to use when sliding down the mountain, but because it was a colder summer than normal the sharp ice underneath the slush was not melted, and sliding down it felt like sliding down razor blades. It was fun for about a second but then the pain set it and detracted from the ride. That night we found the road that we thought we wanted to take was closed, so we slept in the camper in the Mt Rainier carpark. Sharon taught me how to play Cribbage, which I've heard about in novels, and I've seen the board before, but I never knew what it was. I liked staying in the camper. It was so small but had virtually everything we needed. I felt like a tortise, having a portable house. The next morning we drove over to Mt Saint Helens, another nearby active volcano, which last erupted in 1980, taking several lives. We stopped at a view point overlooking a lake, the name of which I can’t remember, but it was covered in floating logs, and apparently beneath the surface is all clogged up with logs as well. This occurred when the volcano erupted, causing a massive tidal wave which swept over the lake, uprooting and taking with it all the trees within its on it’s many diminishing passes back and forth over the lake and surrounding area. For a couple of days I just lazed around the mansion, reading my book on the deck overlooking the bay, painted my toenails, watched Mary Poppins on video, and made 3 different coloured bowls of jelly. One morning Sharon and I were having breakfast on the deck, and a small deer wandered in to the garden below us and was nibbling at the shrubs. I loved this. Imagine having a beautiful, timid, yet wild animal just innocently wander through your garden. Well back home we have an echidna somewhere in our bush backyard and the Cookaburras, Cockatoos and Rainbow Lorrikeets are always around. I guess I’m just used to them, but the owners of this house would be delighted to see the wildlife that visits our home in Sydney, but would think nothing of seeing the deer on their property. On my second last night with Sharon we went to her friend Stevie’s house for a barbeque, and to my horror, the only availability on the menu was sea food. Sharon had told Stevie that the only seafood I eat is crumbed, deep fried calamari, so he went and bought some calamari for me. But that night, by the time all the other sea food had been crumbed and fried, there was no more crumbs left, so I had to have my calamari sauted with garlic. And the calamari was especially for me, so I sort of hat to eat it. And rather than cause a fuss and try and explain my irrational dislike for slimy, smelly, ugly seafood, I even ate a slice of razor clam. This is a huge step for me. It was alright. Not my favourite but I survived the experience. Hopefully Dad, Nick and any other sea food lovers are not falsely inspired by this little episode. It was a fun night, most of the people there live directly on the lake where Stevie lives. I met a Jewish woman, Sherryl, who works as a meat packer and a butcher. She offered to go and get me a Porterhouse steak from her place down the road so I didn’t have to eat the seafood, but I just went with the flow (for a change) and ate the seafood. Sherryl’s done a fair bit of traveling and we compared stories and spoke a lot. She’d spent some time working on a Kybutz in Israel. Stevie was a recreational hunter, and his couches were draped in coyote pelts, and there was a massive, prize winning, moose head on his wall that his father had killed. As an animal lover, I obviously don’t approve of this sport and am not at all impressed by the trophies, but that’s just my opinion. He also had a hand made cribbage board where the pieces where animals teeth, not sure which animal, the teeth were huge! Oh and some of Stevie’s furniture is worth a mention too. He has a three-seater couch and two dentist chairs in his TV room. Strange. Sharon and I woke up before Stevie and we went for a paddle in his row boat around the lake. It was such a serene little area, Cheryl’s boyfriend was going for his morning swim, there was a family of ducks floating around in single file, it was very quiet, but nearly every house had a boat dock or a floating deck with some deck chairs and a table, which set a scene for a relaxing, removed-from-the-rat-race lifestyle kind of atmosphere. And when Stevie woke he was straight back into the whiskey and the bong, first thing in the morning. He decided it was too nice a day to go to the mental hospital where he worked, so he called in sick. We sat out on the deck and played cribbage and talked and just wasted the day away until Sharon and I had to leave. Exactly seven months to the day since I last saw Tucki, aka Michelle Tuch, when she saw me off at the airport when I left for Fiji with Ange last November. Her cousin got married in Ontario, Canada, and we’d arranged to see a bit of the fine country together after that. So Sharon and I went to pick Tucki up from down town Seattle that afternoon. And that night the three of us went to Seattle Stadium to watch a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the Portland (California) team, whose name I can’t remember. I like baseball better than cricket, not that I know much about either, but the baseball uniforms are better. Actually, the game wasn’t exciting at all, and until the second half of the 8th innings, neither team had scored a home run. But then the Mariners scored one, the opposition had another inning to try and catch up, but it failed, so the game was over. I had a great and relaxing time in and around Seattle, and it was great to catch up with Sharon again and do some snow hiking. Hopefully next time we meet up will be in Sydney. Thanks Shaz for having me at your temporary castle and letting me stay in your shell when we were away. Hope you got your new camper and it’s exactly how you imagined it, and also hope all your travels and travel plans are going well. They certainly sound like it. Hope everyone else is also doing well, and enjoying whatever they’re doing right now. For those who are interested, I’ll will be sending out my diary episode about my time in Canada shorly, so stop hastling me :o) I’m a busy girl! Bye for now, Love Nique