Angel of the Winds Casino, Washington

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while. We have been busy with maintenance, inventory and stocking! From Nason Creek we traveled north of Seattle to a casino near Arlington, Washington. Angel of the Winds Casino offered free boondocking so we decided to stay for a few days while we got acquainted with the area.

It was time to find a place to get the oil changed in the RV, do a check on our supplies and purchase things we would need after we crossed into Canada. It was also the place we would meet our friends, Connie and Larry, to plan the Canadian leg of our trip.

Our first full day at the casino we drove to Camping World to see about the oil change, but they couldn't get us in for over a week. We decided to look in the local small towns to find a place to get the RV serviced. That same day, Connie and Larry drove up from Burien where they were staying to visit their daughter and her family. We enjoyed seeing them again--last time we saw them was our Keys trip in 2014! The casino offered $5 if you signed up for their club and you also got a discount on the lunch buffet. We all signed up, got our $5--really, they handed you a $5 bill, no play required--then had our lunch. We made some plans and checked our calendars for a good crossover date and said our goodbyes until closer to the date.

Bob and I found some trails where we could geocache and get some steps. The only problem we had was the trail with all the geocaches was difficult to find. The Pilchuck Tree Farm Recreation Area has over 30 miles of trails, but finding the entrance was a problem. We did find the end of Centennial Trail north of Arlington. The trailhead was marked by this historic Nakashima Barn. Well, it is a hiking biking trail and we thought the geocaches were along this trail. It turns out that the Pilchuck trail runs parallel to this trail about 400 feet into the woods and the geocaches were along that trail. Of course we managed to find a small trail connecting the two and were off to find some caches.

  The Pilchuck Tree Farm Trail was an old logging road through the woods. There were supposed to be caches about every 1/10 of a mile, but we couldn't find them. The caches were placed several years ago and no one has followed through with maintenance. We did find one cache and noticed that someone had signed the log the same day as us. Everywhere we looked after that we could see signs that someone had searched for a cache. When Bob logged the cache, he saw that the other cachers only found ONE cache also. But, during their search, they came across a mama bear and her cub! Thankfully, we didn't run into the bears!

Another day we started Centennial Trail in Arlington. There is an art walk along the trail in town.

There were also geocaches hidden near some of the sculptures. It was difficult to find some of the caches as there were a lot of families out on Mother's Day. We tried our best to be stealthy and get most of the caches. Unfortunately, we did have to pass up a few because of the muggles.

Toward the end of town, the trail splits. The one going to the right is not paved at this time, but it can be used as a walking trail. It is not to our liking as it is just a large gravel walkway---and I'm talking the large chunks of gravel that make walking difficult.

Everywhere we went the flowers were in bloom. The poppies in the city park were gorgeous.

We stayed at the casino four nights. We found a place in Mt. Vernon, Washington to schedule the oil change in the RV so the morning of our appointment (Monday) we packed the RV and headed north. After the oil change we went to Sedro-Woolley, Washington to Riverfront Park. We would wait in Sedro-Woolley for Connie and Larry to join us later in the week.