The basic plan for today is driving West. We start from Greenwood Village Campground and had multiple options in mind where exactly to go. The definite goal is Olympic National Park. Ideally we’ll have quick look at Seattle along the way. Since we decided to leave Glacier National Park one day ahead of the last version of the master plan, we figured we could visit Mount Rainier National Park southeast of Seattle as well. But first things first.

The morning began with the usual routine. The night and morning got colder than expected, so we gave the sun some extra time to appear.

Menu A, aka Porridge, was today’s breakfast choice.

We both dislike doing the dishes. So why use two plates, right?

Marius used the good connectivity and the time zone compatible hour to catch up with his lady. I did some quick laundry in the meantime.

We then put Seattle via Mount Rainier into Google Maps and started driving.

Still in Kalispell, our first stop was a gas station.

They actually had TV screens showing football and advertisements at each pump.

I witnessed a woman watching some programme on the screen while pumping gas while eating ice cream. That’s next-level multitasking. To some extent it almost makes sense, as the pumps are pretty slow compared to their European counterparts.

We put on some old-school roadtrip music to the speakers and headed onwards.

Marius was driving again, so I checked our inventory, made a meal plan, and wrote a shopping list. Next stop: Walmart Supercenter in Spokane – about halftime. Looks like we can manage two weeks of roadtrip with only 3 times shopping.

We got everything from the list: fresh fruits and vegetables, a large bottle of lemonade for my sugar cravings, some lunch, and also – finally – some delicious banana bread.

What I didn’t realise in that moment of pre-eating happiness shown above, was that I accidentally took a bottle of cherry flavoured Pepsi. A major disappointment – some products are just wrong.

The trip continued, and the internet connectivity along the Interstate 93, or “Intershtate” as the German Google Voice pronounced it, was good enough to do some detailed planning. Most of the trip lead through endless planes and fields, so not much to miss not looking outside.

I downloaded maps of the two national parks, checked driving times, things to do, weather forecasts, road closures etc. At this point it wasn’t quite sure whether or not we would skip Mount Rainier. But everything looked quite doable and worth it, so we decided to implement the idea. Meanwhile outside:

Regarding the driving experience Marius and I both came to the conclusion that driving in the US is way more relaxed than in Germany. Almost everybody uses automatic gears and cruise control. This way the traffic flows easily and driving is almost boring.

To have a final destination to navigate to, I checked for a nearby campsite with showers that is close to the park and found one: Squaw Rock RV Resort and Campground at the Naches River. So our final route looked like this:

The scenery towards the end got a bit more interesting.

We added yet another gas stop just outside Yakima.

Some exhaustion set in towards the end, it was a long ride.

I also finished yesterdays blog entry while driving, just to find out the camp site is off the grid such that I couldn’t upload the result.

The campground didn’t look like much from the road, but our place at the river side was the best we had so far. The office was already closed, so we just picked a spot across from the Squaw Rock the campground was named after. We’ll check-in in the morning, as the sign at the door suggested.

Marius was on cooking duty, and prepared what I would call a healthy dinner.

The Squaw Rock showed its mystical side after dark, when some of its minerals reflected light from the environment as if it would have glowing spots.

Time to sleep.

Tomorrow we are going to drive through Mount Rainier and Seattle to Olympic National Park.