The Coho arrives in Victoria, B.C.

June-July 1979 — We had started out from Vancouver, British Columbia, early on the morning of June 30 and caught one of the B.C. ferries, the Queen of Saanich, which carried us to Swartz Bay, outside Victoria. Our plan was to board the ferry Coho in the morning and reach Port Angeles by around noon. But things didn’t go quite as planned. We were just a tiny bit late reaching the boarding area and didn’t make it onto that morning’s ferry; it meant waiting for the next sailing, which wasn’t until 3 in the afternoon. Of course, killing time in and around Victoria’s Inner Harbor wasn’t the worst thing in the world!

It also meant that by the time we eventually arrived in Port Angeles it was 5 o’clock, and the weather had turned very breezy and cold. We found a campground and settled in, hoping for better weather the next day.

Back in 2017 I shared most of the details of our visit to the USS Missouri while it was still berthed in Bremerton, Washington (see Memory Monday, Week 40). Our wish for better weather failed to come true; it rained during the night and on July 1, I woke up to a soaking wet tent and a damp sleeping bag. It also forced us to take a 3-hour detour on the trip from Port Angeles to Bremerton. And it provided me with one of my favorite memories of that entire trip, involving Penny, our Chihuahua-Manchester Terrier puppy, which I originally shared in 2017:

While on our cold, wet detour, we paused in a little town called Hoodsport; leaving Penny alone in the camper for a few minutes, we went looking for some snacks and returned with “some delicious doughnuts.” Unfortunately, once back in the VW we couldn’t find Penny anywhere, no matter how much we searched and called for her. This was getting pretty scary — until Penny finally stuck her head out of my sleeping bag in the back of the car. She may have been just a tiny pup, but it hadn’t take her long to find the warmest spot on that cold day!

Historic spot on the deck

We spent the night camped at a KOA in Olympia, Washington, and headed south the following day to Portland, Oregon. Sunny weather had returned, and although I didn’t record the details in my vacation log, we must have used Interstate 5 to reach Oregon in about two hours.

The plan was to visit the Air National Guard base to say hello to a few guys with the 142nd Fighter Interceptor Squadron that my parents knew. My mom was the lucky one — the flight crew allowed her to sit in the cockpit of an F-101 while my dad took her picture.

Portland International Airport sits just north of the Air National Guard facilities

Welcome to the Oregon Air National Guard

Next week, our visit to the beautiful Multnomah Falls, and a first glimpse of Crater Lake!