April 8th:

Hi folks!

This is my (Frans) second contribution to this blog and to keep the mums in touch of our adventures on the North-American continent. All you facebookless people will wonder how our car trouble adventure ended. Stop worrying because: the Hoff is up and running again! The second day in Chilliwack looked a lot like the first, only another mechanic of Midas decided to look at our car. Unfortunately this guy had some trouble with his pronunciation, which left us wondering what he was doing to our van. Besides, this guy seemed to take a big pleasure in having three hour lunch breaks, because after a whole day Starbucking, chillin' out in the McDonalds and bathing in the leisure centre the van still wasn't finished. A second night outside the shop followed and around noon the following day (wednesday) we finally could move again. Around 550 dollars less in our pockets, though with a new starter, ignition and some minor adjustments we finally hit the road again after another quick return to the Midas because our friend the mechanic forgot to remove the bypass in our fuelsystem...

Anyhow, around 3-ish we crossed the border at Abbotsford. A nice dude with the Dutch last name Van Dyke, interrogated us for half an hour with interesting and challenging questions as: 'Did you ever use pot?', 'You have any groceries in your van?', 'How much cash do you have?' and 'Sander, do you have a bad hair day?'.

In Olympic National Forest, we did a hike of ~14 km and we finally dried our tears after so much car trouble. The weather was gorgeous (we wore shorts!), the forest was amazing with a 60 metres high spruce tree and moss growing from the trees and it was fantastic to finally stretch our limbs after 7 days in a car. Pictures will be posted. Right now, we are at Kalaloch, a sort of resort along the highway 101 and we´re watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. After the dishes have been done, we´ll drive for another hour and go to a more northern site of Olympic National Park to go hiking for another day. Then, we´ll make our way south along the 101 to Redwood National Park and San Fransisco.

Bye!!