Friday, March 30, 2012 (Travel to Burlington, WA)

We were up early this morning...at 6:00, I got up and went right into the shower while Steve got dressed and went outside in the dark to take the satellite down.  There would be no long, relaxing coffee time this morning.  After I was finished in the bathroom, it was Steve’s turn.  After a quick breakfast, we got all packed up and ready to go...there has been so much rain over the past couple of days that Steve needed to wear his rubber boots...

Water, water everywhere...

Goodbye Deep Lake and Millersylvania State Park...

We stopped at the sani-dump on the way out of the park and then at the Pilot station on the way to the Interstate to fuel up...$4.43/gallon!  It was 9:00 by the time we had finished at this very busy truck stop and were on the highway heading north.

It was an uneventful drive north on the I-5...some stretches could use some re-paving though!  We even managed to avoid rain...but there were lots of heavy dark clouds in the direction we were headed.  Steve’s favourite part of the drive (haha)...through Seattle....

We arrived at Camping World in Burlington at about 11:30...we parked the rig and went inside to let them know we were there (a little early for our 1:00 appointment).  After checking in, they were more willing to check out the wiring they had done on the inverter (almost 2 years ago now) but if it was okay, they were going to charge us $74 just for having a technician go out to check it.  What??!  It will take a tech 2 minutes to go look at the gauge of wire used and confirm that it is correct as per the installation guide for the unit.   She decided that she would go talk to the shop foreman about it.

To make a long story short, the wiring was checked and the gauge was correct...and we didn’t have to pay anything.  The camping area behind Camping World, where we thought that we would spend the night, ended up being full so we decided we would just go to a nearby KOA for the night.  We still wanted to do some shopping before crossing the border in the morning and since it was now into the afternoon, we thought we would just go there.

We checked into the Burlington KOA and were given site 25, a long pull-through.  As we find in numerous campgrounds, the sites themselves may be big rig friendly but the road into the site can be tough to maneuver due to trees.  This campground was no exception...but we managed to get into our site.  We quickly got unhitched and set up so that we could head back into town to Walmart and Cascade Mall.

When we were finished our shopping, those dark clouds that had been looming decided to open up and it was just pouring!  It started out as rain and got heavier and heavier and then turned to hail.  We still needed to stop at Fred Meyer’s gas bar to top up our diesel (cheapest around at $4.36/gallon)...thank goodness the gas bar was covered!  But it was windy and cold!

Back at the campground, we decided not to re-hitch tonight...we’ll wait until the morning when hopefully it won’t be so wet.