Q & A with the “Traveling Pasleys” Part I

Q: Dave and Betsy Pasley, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer a few questions about your travel plans for the summer.

DP: Happy to do it.

Q: Where are you going this year?

DP: The state in our RGTK (really get to know) sights this year is Washington, the only lower 48 state west of the Mississippi River that we have not visited with a travel trailer since we bought our first trailer in 2011.

We are leaving home June 3 with the travel trailer in tow and heading due north through the southern Great Plains into Nebraska and then angling northwest through Wyoming to Butte, Montana. Assuming we don’t get sucked into a tornado, that should take about a week. Other than some stops at a few obscure National Park Service units, this first leg of the trip is mostly dedicated to grinding out the miles and closing in on Washington.

We’ll take our first real breather from driving with a four-night layover in Butte. We’ve seen a good bit of Montana on past trips, but we’ve never been to Butte and want to explore some of the history of this wild west mining town while also using it as a base camp to visit (relatively) nearby NPS sites and the state capitol in Helena.

From Butte we’ll have to cover a little more than 300 miles to reach our first stop in Washington, Spokane. We’ll stay five nights in Spokane, using the city as a base to explore along the state’s eastern border with the Idaho panhandle.

From there we will move west for a three-night stay on the upper Columbia River, visiting Grand Coulee Dam and taking a boat trip on Lake Chelan. Then we’ll go north and west; up and over the Cascade Mountains for a four-night stay on the banks of the Skagit River near North Cascades National Park.

Normally late June would be ahead of the fire season in northern Washington, but they’ve had a dry winter. So we have our fingers crossed that it will not be too smoky during our time there.

From the mountains we will continue due west to Puget Sound. The trailer will spend six nights in the town of Anacortes but we will be there for only four of them because we are taking the ferry out to the San Juan Islands for a two-night stay.

We had planned to continue on across the bay, to Vancouver Island, British Columbia - until we realized (too late) that our passports had expired. Not to worry though there are tons of cool things to do and see in the Anacortes area.

After Anacortes we will make a one-night visit to Everette, primarily to take in an AquaSox minor league baseball game. From there we’ll skirt around Seattle to cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge onto the Kitsap Peninsula where we will settle in for an 18-night stay in the town of Gig Harbor.

Gig Harbor will be our base camp for exploring both Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula. It’s about a 30-minute drive from Gig Harbor to the ferry terminal in Bremerton and then a one-hour boat ride to the heart of downtown Seattle. We will probably make that trip at least a half-dozen times, using transit, Uber and our bicycles to move around Seattle. One of our Seattle stops will be, of course, a Mariners game. We’ll also spend a few days exploring Olympic National Park, take in some of the sites and sights along the Pacific coast, the state capitol in Olympia, a AAA minor league game in Tacoma and other items of interest on the peninsula.

From Gig Harbor we will head southeast back into the Cascade Mountains for a four-night stay near the small town of Randle, which is about halfway between Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens. Obviously, in addition to hoping there are not a lot of forest fires during this time, we will also be hoping there is no volcanic activity!

From Randle we will proceed southeast to spend our final three nights in Washington in the Tri-Cities area where we will tour the historic Hanford nuclear reactor, visit another NPS site in the area and take in another minor league baseball game.

And that’s it, our 44-night, RGTK-a-state visit to Washington will be over.

Observant readers may have noticed that we are not venturing into the southwest corner of the state (Vancouver, etc.). The reason is that we visited this part of the state during our RGTK tour of Oregon in 2013 and we did not feel a compelling need to go back. In fact, on that same 2013 trip, we attended the Washington State Fair in Puyallup.

RGTK started right here!

Q: How many states have you RGTKed?

DP: Washington will be our seventh RGTK state. We started with Delaware in 2011 before we bought the first trailer. We did that as sort of a lark, in conjunction with Tex’s graduation from college in nearby Maryland. But it kind of set the tone for retirement and we liked the concept. So, in 2013, we took a month to circle the Florida coastline – from Pensacola to Key West to Jacksonville – AND volunteered at Apostle Islands AND followed the Oregon Trail west to spend six weeks RGTKing Oregon. All of that was in the travel trailer. Coast to coast, Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes; 2013 was a big year!

In 2014 we RGTKed Ohio, in 2016 it was Wisconsin and, in 2017, we RGTKed North Carolina.

Q: What are your future RGTK plans?

DP: Hawaii is a candidate, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Washington is the last state on our “A list” for the RGTK treatment so it could be the last. Maine-New Hampshire-Vermont is a possibility as is New Mexico where we have several “unvisited” NPS sites to see. But those are not burning desires. There are a lot of states where we have spent a significant amount of time and have a strong desire to return and spend significantly more time; like, for instance, California. But states like California don’t really fit the RGTK format because they are so big and complex and there are so many things to do. New York is in that same category, plus it’s not well-suited to a travel-trailer-based visit. There are several states that do fit the format where we have already spent a considerable amount of time; essentially RGTKing but doing it in multiple trips over multiple years instead of in one fell swoop. Minnesota would be at the top of that list, which would also include states like Michigan and Wyoming. There are also several states, mostly in the southeast, where we have no interest in spending six weeks RGTK. Alabama and Georgia are at the top of that list. But that does not mean that we don’t have an interest in going (back) to Alabama to visit specific places like, for instance, some of the new NPS civil-rights-related historic sites. I’ll also mention that Texas has not fallen off our radar screen. I’ve been to all 254 Texas counties and we have traveled extensively throughout Texas but there are still tons of places in Texas that we have not been to and/or want to re-visit. But, in terms of a state getting the full-fledged RGTK treatment; Washington might be the last (or, maybe, second to last).

Q: Where will you go this summer after you’ve RGTKed Washington?

DP: From Washington we will head southeast toward Colorado with stops in Boise, Idaho; City of Rocks National Preserve in southern Idaho, and; Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in northeastern Utah.

If all goes as planned, we will pull into Buena Vista, Colorado in early August and stay a few days before putting the trailer into storage and taking off for the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin, arriving there in time to get prepared to go out to our duty station on Sand Island on August 13. We will remain on the island until September 3.

As many readers know from previous postings; as volunteers on Sand Island we are, basically, “in charge of" the five-square-mile island; conducting tours of the historic lighthouse, monitoring campsites and docks, cleaning outdoor toilets (privys), monitoring water quality, mowing and maintaining grounds and buildings, etc. We’ll stay in a comfortable, small NPS house that runs on solar power and propane. The daily commute from the house to the lighthouse is an easy four-mile-roundtrip hike through the woods.

We’ll probably stay in the APIS area for a few days after our volunteer duties are completed and then “drift” southward toward home, arriving by mid-to-late September.

Q: Will you be keeping readers posted about the things you see and do on this trip?

DP: Depending on internet connections and my interest level, I may post some updates and photos during the trip. If not, it could be a massive summary download after we get home.

Q. Betsy, you are quiet over there? Anything to add?

BP: Well, I’m just a pawn in the game of life, and happy that Dave drags me out of the house every now and then. Otherwise I’d be lounging around all day watching baseball, reading books, and gorging on cheese doodles.

Q: We look forward to getting back together with you two for Part II of this Q & A; to ask you about your various lists; highpoints, parks, state fairs, etc.

DP & BP: Sounds great! We can hardly wait!!