Back to Washington State

We headed back to Washington today, landing at Birch Bay Thousand Trails (Blaine, WA). We easily made it across the border and had a relatively non-stressful trip (although the Garmin took us to the wrong RV campground, the lady there was able to tell us how to get to Thousand Trails).

Dwayne had a prescription that was at the CVS inside Target in Bellingham, WA, so we headed there to pick it up. We also went by Costco to check out the fueling station - I had looked up diesel prices on GasBuddy and the Costco had good prices... but when I tried to look up the satellite view on GoogleMaps, it only showed an open field. I had called the store and the lady I talked with said that a big rig would be able to get in-and-out, but we decided it would be good to get fuel for the Jeep and determine the way in and out for Miss Doozie before going there on our way to the next campground. It turns out that it was easy to get in and out of, so we'll check prices on GasBuddy again and go there if Costco prices are best.

It was interesting that almost all of the license plates I saw while we were there fueling up the Jeep were from British Columbia. I guess it is worth the hassle of crossing the border and driving a few miles to get cheap fuel prices.

On our way back to the campground, the sun was setting over Victoria Island, so we took a detour to Birch Bay and took some pictures:

Just beautiful - Master-Peace!

The closer part of land on the right might be Point Roberts, a part of Washington state that is a peninsula off of British Columbia. I noticed this odd appendage on the map a couple of days ago, and looked up information about it... According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington), the Oregon Treaty (the one that was noted on the marker that I blogged about yesterday) set the 49th parallel as the dividing line, and it happened that Point Roberts was left as a kind of orphan area. It has remained part of the US and part of Washington state. The Wikipedia article also indicated that the school there addresses K-3rd grade, and after that, children must ride to school to Blaine, WA (the address of where we are now). 

Yesterday when I blogged about visiting the location along the Canadian border (http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2017/09/border-and-cultus-lake.html), I wondered how far it was to a road in the US. Our internet was pretty slow at the campground near Cultus Lake, so I couldn't do much research, but tonight I looked it up - turns out, the closest road on the US side was not very far away:

I put the red pin where I think the border marker is located.

This URL will take you to a googlemaps view of the area - you can change to satellite view and I think you can see the marker in the satellite picture. There are houses on the road on the US side that you can see on my screen capture.
Google maps link to marker location

I have always enjoyed looking at maps and seeing oddities... such fun!