Over the Mountains

Snoqualmie pass was so much better then I thought it would be. We left Tri-Cities at 10am, kind of late, but with no problems that would give us plenty of time to get to Bellingham and the Ferry by the 3pm check in. The pass was great we even got sun at the top which stayed with us until we got on the ferry. The frost was very heavy starting at the Yakima Firing range, you can sure tell which way the weather comes from.
Top of the pass, sunshine!

Missed the I-5 exit, I was thinking we would be taking 405 all the way to Bellingham, so when the I-5 came up we couldn’t get through the traffic and onto the exit. (Not a pretty sight, both of us yelling, and at who?) And of course it wasn’t a simple turn around, no taking an exit, go over the overpass and back on, NO, we took the exit, ran into a mall, had to figure out how to find our way back to the freeway, hit road construction then finally found our way back to the right direction. We checked in at the ferry office at 3:30pm and the lady was like, “you’re late, we could give away your tickets when your late” I was ready to reach across the counter and strangle her. At home we get to the ferry at 5 minutes till it leaves and they never have anything but nice things to say to us, and this one didn’t leave until 6pm!!! I thought we were doing darn good. Then she says, you’d better hurry and get in line, don’t go and do anything else. So of course like idiots we went and got in line. Sat there until almost 5:30pm. They really could use some bathrooms and maybe a concession stand in that line. What was that rush about? The ferry was full, of vehicles anyway, they had us move our car more then once, and almost everyone else had to come back down to the car deck to move their cars closer together too. When we moved ours there were at least 4 cars on the ramp trying to get on, I don’t know where they found the room for them. We went to where we had slept on the way down, but the firewatch guy made us move this time up to the top level. OH boy, a mom with 3 kids all by herself is up there too. The kids aren’t bad it’s her yelling at them that is annoying. I’m voting her off of the ship, so tomorrow at Ketchikan she has to get off………oh, I guess that is her stop anyway. And since when did they stop giving free refills on coffee on the ferry? The sign is always there that says no refills, but when did they start enforcing that? This is a totally different crew this trip, I don’t like them. Where’s the guys we know and love? There’s also a lot of “strange” guys on board this trip, and I’m not talking about the military ones………I think these guys must be going to work in the processors, either that or they are running from the law in some state, I’m not impressed, and they are sharing our dorm with us! Don’t they know the showers are FREE! I keep wondering if this is a miserable trip because I’m really not ready to head north yet. One good thing, this is a shorter trip, no stop in Sitka and only 1 hour in Ketchikan, so we’ll be in Juneau on Monday morning.
It sure was a beautiful drive over the pass.Dog at work, in line at the ferry in Bellingham. He sure worked the cars fast and didn't find anything! Arrived in Juneau this am, 29 degrees and snowing...............