Well I guess moss never tends to grow under our feet….. just weeds… We have done all of our final garden preps and we have hit the road searching for better weather. We never really have must of an idea where we are going, but generally south.

Oddly our first night camping we found a county fair grounds campground (they often have great inexpensive campgrounds) and my All stays app said that it is open all year, so we headed there. Only to find that although there was no formal sign that said it was closed, searching the internet made clear it WAS closed. however the power was still hooked up to the sites and the next place was a long ways away, and it was late and so we plugged in and left jeep hooked in up in case we were asked to leave.. but we were not. It seemed quite cold and in the AM it was clearly frozen (-2 celsius). The camping app had said it was at 1800 feet elevation, but it turned out to be 2600 feet and APPARENTLY (according to a friend) the highest elevation of any town in Washington. I guess every town needs to have a claim to fame and apparently Waterville, Washington is the highest elevation of any town in Washington state. It is one of those towns that is extremely well demarcated. You are out in the middle of nowhere and then you are in a town.

Further south and closer to sea level is Saddle mountain, a BLM area that is well known throughout Washington for its petrified wood. We have been here before and simply took the jeep along the very circuitous route to where everyone else had dug for the prize rock. We are MUCH too lazy to dig anymore. The book said that the entire mountain is likely home to a petrified forest and to just wander around looking for bits of petrified wood, and then dig there because it was possibly like the tip of an iceberg.

So we decided to just climb the mountain (on foot) from the backside to see if we found any tips, (of icebergs). We figured we had just finished the camino…. so what the heck. It was actually a bit of a difficult climb and we went a LONG ways up without seeing much of anything. AND THEN…. near the top, I started seeing broken bits of Petrified wood (PW), and then more and then more. So we tracked the bits up a very steep part of the mountain and found where all of the bits were coming from… essentially a petrified log, with no large chunks near by. Likely a few tons of petrified wood in an area we felt uncomfortable standing (it was so steep) let along hauling this log out…. So we just left it there, sadly….it was just so much fun to find it, I guess that was good enough. Sadly I thought I had taken a picture but getting back I realized I had not.

The way down is always harder in different ways than going up. Going up its all about lungs and heart… going down it’s all about knees and elbows, and as such I slipped and fell. (this is NOT unusual for me at all). However….I have a new IWatch, and it quite suddenly started ringing…and trying to shut it down I realized it was recording my comments. It said “it looks like you have had quite a bad fall, do you want emergency assistance?” Of course I did not, it likely seemed worse that it was because I fell right on my phone and likely these devices sympathize with each other.

Of note, it would have likely taken a helicopter to get someone with a broken leg where I was, so GOOD thing I was able to shut the thing off.

I guess that is all the stories for now

bye for now

Janet, Ken and Tucker( who has NOT just done the Camino, so needs to get into shape 🤨)