Day 464 Back home

Well, after a two day drive, I'm home again.  I left Tuesday at 0640 and headed out for the Bainbridge Ferry to take me over to Seattle so I could get on I-90 to head East.  I got to the ferry and it was a mad house.  There were tons of cars already waiting to get across.  They stopped me at the toll gate and told me to wait there as the car waiting area was already full.  The car in front of me got the last space.  It came down to who got their car in what lane of the toll booths and how fast the person was in front of you at paying the toll.  There being 4 toll booths, it was a roll of the dice.  I ended up being car number 1 in the waiting line for the next ferry(50 minutes later).  After they got everyone one on board, there was space for three more cars, so I got lucky and didn't have to wait for the next one.

I was using the Microsoft Street and Trips program on my computer which was sitting on the seat beside me to guide me where I needed to go.  I'd attached my small GPS unit that I use on Zephyrs navigation computer.  The program shows me on a map exactly where I am at all times.  As the ferry left the dock, we started heading South instead of East to Seattle!!!  For the first 10 minutes we were heading in the wrong direction.  I was getting concerned that I had some how gotten on the wrong ferry.  Now there is only one ferry that leaves Bainbridge and it always goes to Seattle so there was no way I could be on a wrong ferry.  Ten minutes out, we suddenly turned East and headed toward Seattle.  I don't know why we were going in the wrong direction but I was glad we were now going in the right direction.  We pulled in about 20 minutes later.   

Once off the ferry, I took off East to make up for the time sitting during the cross though taking the ferry saved me a lot of miles as I would have had to go through Portland, Oregon if I had gone South down the peninsula.  Once into the eastern section of Washington state, I was amazed as I came over the ridge the vast openness of the prairie ahead of me.   It went on for miles and miles of just open wilderness.  I know it was probably some ones ranch or farm, but as far as I could see, there was just the open grass lands.  I'd forgotten the vast openness of the prairie there.  It was like being on an ocean of land with nothing as far as the eye could see but earth instead of water and not a soul on it.  It was quite startling to see after so long on the water.  

I kept running into construction zones as I drove and was surprised that while the cones were all out, no repairs were being made.  I guess that is another sign of the budget cutbacks the states are having to make during this time of shortfalls in money.  While I saw some work being done on Seattle streets, I didn't see any more work being done until I was into eastern Wyoming though I passed through at least a dozen construction zones.  Each time, everyone had to slow down for them yet saw nothing being done in them.  Maybe there will be money next year and they can get back on track to finish what they started.

I made it to Twin Falls, Idaho the first day after a long 11 + hours behind the wheel plus I lost a hour switching to Mountain Time.  I pulled into Best Western found dinner and crashed for the night.

Yesterday, I was on the road by 0800 and got into Denver at about 1930 hours.  Not bad for about 1400 miles in a car that hasn't really been driven in a long time by a person who hasn't driven that kind of distance in a long time.  When I ran out of radio stations in the back roads, I fired up iTunes on my Mac and listened to a book on tape I'd loaded a long time ago to listen to as we sailed at night.  Just about the same thing except the Sun was up instead of the moon.

Now the fun begins taking care of those things that still need to be taken care of but that we hadn't since we have been gone from home for such a long time.  It's going to be several days of run, run run so don't expect lots of exciting things on the blog for a while.

Tracy meanwhile has been working on the canvas cover that protects the teak sides of Zephyrs hull.  Having installed so many things on the edge of the deck and the stern, it needed to be refashioned to fit properly around all the new equipment.  Lots of cutting, fitting and sewing on our sewing machine.  We bought a very big and heavy sewing machine to keep on Zephyr for any kind of sail repairs that might need to be fixed or made for that matter.  It's made by Sailrite that specializes in machines for just such projects where big and thick pieces of canvas need to be stitched together.  It will even stitch through multi layers of leather and canvas at the same time.

The TV has continued to act up so Tracy is trying to rent a car to take it to Poulsbo for repairs.  No cars have been available for the past day or so at the rental lot so she may end up having to take the bus to get it there.  Hopefully, since the problem is intermittent, they can find out what is wrong and get it fixed.  It's no fun hearing the program but only seeing multi colored vertical(like a upc code)stripes on the screen. 

Well, that's about it for now.  It's errand time.