Man; what a difference 250 miles and a day make…today was beautiful. We woke up to bright sunny skies so after Mass we headed off on a short hike of about 2 miles to Syphon Falls right near where we are parked. We parked, changed into hiking gear and headed up the slope…this was about a mile out and back hike with about 300 feet of elevation gain on the way out…which made it a fairly strenuous hike despite the short length. The trail was a bit damp from yesterday’s rain but not too bad…at least in hiking shoes. About halfway up we passed a family group coming down and one 20 or so year old young lady was in a dress that looked like she came from church and dress sandals (at least they were flats instead of heels). She was clearly overdress and undershoed for this particular hike…and we wondered what was she thinking; as the last quarter mile or so turned out to be pretty rocky and the steepest portion of the trail, hiking across it in a dress must have been quite an interesting sight.

Anyway; we spotted a butterfly and some wildflowers on the way up.

On arrival at the falls we got a few photos while Connie rested. The falls are a double cascade maybe 50 or 60 feet high.

By this time Connie had caught her breath so we headed back down to the car; and snapped another picture of the same butterfly type right next to where BAT was parked.

And then we headed off to lunch. We found a restaurant right on the lake and ate out on the veranda under an umbrella…BLT for Connie and a Chicken Breast Sandwich with everything for Neil along with a couple pints of Sleeman’s Honey Brown Lager…which turned out to be so tasty we had another pint each before taking a short walk along the boardwalk right outside the restaurant to see what sort of waterfowl we might happen across.

There was a duck we could not identify, our most far north sighting of a Great Blue Heron and a Mallard duck sitting on a log.

As well as a family of Osprey’s. Their nest was just about 30 yards or so away from where we were eating and we got some pictures from the restaurant but when we got out on the boardwalk we walked up to within about 10 yards or so for these shots (except for Dad getting the fish which was about 50 yards further down the boardwalk. first up was the female sitting on the nest…I don’t know if I told you this before but Osprey’s are really bad at nest building and their nests only have about a 30 percent probability of lasting through the nesting season. This is why you almost always see their nests built on top of a platform on a pole; those platforms are specifically put up for the Osprey’s to use for nesting; other birds won’t use them.

then the male bringing home a fish for lunch.

Once the fish was verified dead by the male he brought it over to the nest…wonder if he got a tip as the deliveryman.

And finally we spotted a pair of chicks peeking their beaks over the top of the next as the female was feeding them. They look to be only a few weeks old, maybe a month at the outside.

With that we headed home after fueling up BAT for tomorrow’s transit; we’ve decided to stop at Omak, WA at a city owned RV park. It’s about 40 miles further along than our original destination of Oroville but has pull throughs instead of just back in sites and for an overnight stop a pull through allows us to skip unhitching which makes our morning preps a whole lot simpler…and also shortens our drive on Tuesday into Leavenworth. After dinner Neil wandered over and talked to Andy Zust about the full-time lifestyle; he and his wife Lisa are originally from Switzerland and are considering full-timing when they retire. Neil also verified that our planned route tomorrow down BC-97 is fine for RV traffic as the truck GPS wants to take us further to the west and add about 100 miles which we really didn’t want to do. Andy confirmed that BC-97 is the main RV and truck route down to the states so we’re good to go.

Dinner was pork and potato hash…it turned out to be decent but not outstanding. We’ll be back in the US tomorrow and will regain cell phone reception which Connie is happy about…almost as happy as she was yesterday when we discovered the internet here at View Point was really good.

Cyas.