Settled in La Conner

Our relocation from Puyallup to La Conner went off without a problem. We left on time at 9:30 and arrived right at noon to register and select a site at the Thousand Trails preserve. It was a very nostalgic drive while passing through Bellevue on I-405 as I recalled nearly 20 years of working in that particular area of WA. It has changed dramatically as I watched the very first high rise being constructed in that town back in 1980. It now has at least 10-12 high rise buildings – at least, that I could see from the freeway. I still noticed the two story building where my corner office was located is still standing.

 The entire drive was a pretty one and we only passed through a couple occasional showers and the skies were starting to clear for the first time since we arrived on April 5. As we got closer to La Conner, we could see the tulip fields in all their glory:

 

It will be exciting to take the tulip fields tour that we have missed for over 15 years now.

We selected our site from among the 10 or so that would allow satellite reception from a rooftop dish. There are a couple hundred sites here, but they are mostly in the woods with lots and lots of trees. It isn’t the nicest site by any means, but is convenient to the lodge and the beaches along the Skagit Bay:

 

 There are some problems with our site. First of all, it is has only 30 amps of electricity which will limit our concurrent use of some appliances. Secondly, it has no sewer hookup so we will have to utilize their “honey wagon” service for emptying our holding tanks while we are here. The last problem, and perhaps the most important one, is that there is no Wi-Fi capability as a result of the low lying campground and the distance from us of the nearest Verizon tower. We drove into Anacortes (about 10 miles) which has the nearest Radio Shack to look for a booster antenna for the data card we use for Internet. They had a solution, but it cost $100 for the device which we would only have occasional use for, so we passed on that and will just go to the family lodge to use the Internet. It is a real inconvenience and has soured us somewhat on the Thousand Trails preserves which have let us down on the last two stays – Chehalis and here. I went to the lodge last night to try out the reception and couldn’t get a signal until I tried while parked in our car outside the lodge. I’m not sure if we will be able to stick it out for the two weeks we have scheduled here so don’t be surprised if we move to another campground in the area where the services are more convenient.

 All was well until 8:30 PM last night when our power went out at the pedestal where we plug in our power cord. I was unable to reset the breaker and had to connect our power to the adjacent site until I can get some service done on ours this morning. We’ll do the best we can with what we’ve got though, and look forward to visiting this nice area of WA…