August 24, 2007

August 24, 2007

We are so ready to leave Seattle. We miss the sunshine and hot weather. The bad memories of trying to get our refrigerator fixed don’t help. But we are in no hurry now. For the first time in awhile we don’t have a date to constrain us. We are free and easy. We drive southeast along I90 and I82 for three hours and stop at nice RV resort in Richland, WA. They have great Internet. First in awhile. As normal we get the best Internet in small towns in the middle of nowhere and terrible reception in large cities. Go figure!

August 23, 2007

August 23, 2007

Today is the long-awaited day that we get our refrigerator fixed. We drive to Camping World in a southern suburb of Seattle and drop the RV off. Since it will take most of the day we rent a car and drive downtown to see the sights. We have heard a lot of good things about Seattle. We park by the Space Needle, Seattle’s iconic landmark, and take the monorail to Pike’s Market, where downtown meets the Puget Sound. Aimee and I are a little embarrassed by how short the ride is. We should have walked.

Pike’s Market is a cute array of fresh flower, fish, and vegetable stands interspersed with souvenir shops and restaurants. It also has the world’s first Starbuck coffee shop. We have a delicious Clam Chowder lunch while overlooking Puget Sound.

Afterwards we walk back to the Needle and take the elevator to the top. The Space Needle was built in 1962 when Seattle hosted the World’s Fair. It is expensive and very touristy but I guess you have to do it when in Seattle. We get a great view of the city. Because of the clouds, Mt Rainier looks like it is floating in the sky behind the downtown office buildings.

At the end of the day we return to Camping World and find our refrigerator is working again. YES!! We are ecstatic. We ditch the rental car and return to the RV park. On the way we stop at the grocery store to stock the refrigerator. We feel like we are celebrating, buying all the “luxury” food items we missed over the last couple weeks.

August 22, 2007

August 22, 2007

We have a reservation for a tour of Boeing’s commercial jet assembly plant this morning. We drive 45 minutes south to the factory location in Everett, WA. Unfortunately there are no cameras allowed on the tour. They first have us watch the 4-5 month assembly process in fast-forward in a seven-minute film. From there we board busses that take us to the assembly building, the largest building by volume in the world. We watch a few 747’s under construction. The 747 is on its last legs; it is no longer made for passenger use, only for cargo service. The tour is a little disappointing as not only is it not free we only get to watch the process for about 15 minutes. When I was in college I had a couple summer jobs at McDonnell-Douglas in St. Louis and I got to watch fighter jets being built up close and personal. That was far more interesting.

At the tour center, they also have a bunch of exhibits on commercial jets. Most are uninteresting. Boeing is counting on its new 787 coming out next year to stave off inroads by Europe’s Airbus consortium. If successful it should, as the 787 will be mostly made of graphite and glue compared to aluminum and rivets. The weight savings alone will improve fuel efficiency by 20%.

We spend the night at a private park just outside Seattle in Bellevue, WA.

August 21, 2007

August 21, 2007

This morning we drove south across the border from Canada into the US. After quickly passing thru the border guard station, the Dept of Agriculture then waved us over for inspection. This lady looked at every food item we had. She carefully examined our half-eaten Oscar Meyer bologna and ballpark franks. She then spied an orange in our cooler. Apparently it was contraband. We had to eat it in front of her and leave her the peelings. We have illegals and terrorists swarming across the border but our government is more concerned about the orange we bought in a Canadian grocery store. Unbelievable!

From the border we drove south to Omak, WA where we turned west on Rt. 20 to cross over the Cascade Mountains. This part of the drive was very picturesque. If we didn’t have a long drive ahead of us we would have liked to stop along the way in Winthrop, WA. It seemed like a very cute western-themed town. Just past the summit we come to the North Cascade Scenic Drive. It follows the Skagit River thru a canyon past several man-made lakes and hydroelectric dams. The Lake Diablo overlook had lots of interesting interpretative signs about the area.

The Skagit canyon is straddled by the North Cascades National Park. We stop at their visitor center. This park was just established in 1987 and seems to be just some congressman’s political pet project, probably to bring tax dollars and jobs to the area. Nothing here seems worthy of National Park status, mostly just some snowy isolated mountains. There are no roads in the actual park. The visitor center and hiking trails are all outside the park in the Skagit River Byway.

After two long driving days we finally reach the west coast again and we spend the night in a private park in Mt. Vernon, WA.

August 20, 2007

August 20, 2007

It is overcast and raining today. Given the greenness of the surroundings, this is probably not uncommon. We drive from Golden, BC west to Glacier National Park of Canada and stop at the Rogers Pass visitor center. They have some exhibits on the discovery of this pass over the mountains and the construction of the railway over it. On the drive here the road passed under several lean-to tunnels. Aimee and I speculated they were probably to prevent tumbling rocks from dropping on the highway. The exhibits explain that they are to protect the road from snow. This is major avalanche country!

We continue on thru Glacier to Mt. Revelstoke NP. Because of the rain and cool weather, we decide to forgo doing any hikes and just keep driving southwest toward Seattle. Between the weather and traffic it is slow going. I thought we were going to breeze thru this deserted stretch of Canada. It turns out BC is much more heavily populated than I would have imagined. The Okanagan valley and the city of Kelowna is especially crowded. This long river and lake valley is Canada’s wine and fruit country. Based on a recommendation we make a brief stop at the Grey Monk winery in Winfield for a tasting. The wine is surprisingly excellent. I never knew Canada had good wines. Beside fine wine this winery has a beautiful restaurant on a hillside terrace overlooking the lake here. Aimee and I both wished we had not already stopped for lunch. We spend the evening at an RV park in Oliver, BC on the border with Washington state.

August 19, 2007

August 19, 2007

In the morning we rise early and drive west on Canada’s Hwy 1 to Yoho National Park and stop at the town of Field, British Columbia. There we meet up with a group for a hike to the Mt. Stephens Trilobite beds. This and the nearby Walcott Quarry are part of the Burgess Shale formation. To protect these world-famous fossil sites from pilfering, they are strictly off-limits except by a government-sanctioned guided hike. Ours is led by a paleontologist from the University of Calgary. The trilobite bed is on the side of a mountaintop and is a very strenuous three-hour climb, not hike, up the mountainside.

As an amateur wanna-be geologist, it is well worth the effort for we are rewarded with an amazing site. The bed is a sliding mass of slate slabs with fossil imprints of 500-million year old trilobites on what seems like every other sheet. I feel bad walking over the area thinking I am destroying an ancient fossil with every step. A trilobite was a hard-shelled sea creature and one of the earliest animal species on earth. The hike up was tough, but the hike down was treacherous. The constant drizzle for the last 12 hours turned the steep grade into a slippery mess.

After the hike, we quickly peruse the small fossil exhibit at the Field visitor center. Since we are cold, tired, and wet, we are ready to stop early, so we head west out of Yoho, stopping only for a few minutes to see the parks Natural Bridge oddity. We spend the night at a public RV park in the town of Golden, BC.

August 18, 2007

August 18, 2007

With only a plug-in cooler to keep our food cold we need electricity every night. There are no private parks within many miles of Banff. Unlike the US, Canadian National Parks have RV hookups. Banff NP has two fairly large parks with electricity but they sell out quickly during peak season. We want to get the worm so we rise early and head to Lake Louise, only thirty minutes northwest on Canada’s Hwy 1. We are in luck and get a spot for tonight. Now we can relax and enjoy the area without worrying.

We head first to Moraine Lake about eight miles down a side road. We hike atop a rock hill to get a good view of it. It is gorgeous. It sits in a horseshoe shaped mountain alcove that was gouged out by a long-gone glacier. The blue color is so stunning it looks fake. Similar to the artificial algaecide color of golf-course ponds. The beauty of this lake is attraction enough. As an added bonus there are quite a few interpretative signs pointing out fossil remains in the rocks.

From Moraine we head to the main draw, Lake Louise. It is a picture-perfect lake. It is almost perfectly oval, the milky teal color of glacial lakes, pine forests on the sides, with sheer mountains and small glaciers at the far end and a premier chalet at this end. An artist couldn’t paint a better scene. I have to take a lot of pictures. The only improvement would be eliminating the last vestiges of the forest fire haze.

Our exercise today is hiking up the north side of Lake Louise to Lake Agnes. It is a straight up hill climb for an hour. Aimee doesn’t mind because of the teahouse at the top. We celebrate our summit with tea and biscuits while looking back down at Lake Louise. It looks so tiny from up here. It is a good thing we got here early, as Lake Louise is jammed to the gills now.

Back in the town of Lake Louise we stop at the visitor center where they have a fairly large set of displays about the geology and formation of the Canadian Rockies. It is quite nice.

The air seems to be getting a little clearer so Aimee and I take the RV on a leisurely drive some 30 miles farther north along Canada’s Icefields Parkway. We turn around at the Crowfoot Glacier Viewpoint on Bow Lake. The road between Banff and Jasper is the most beautiful I have ever driven. No wonder it is a World Heritage Site. We will come back again, only next time in the off-season when most of these tourists are gone. Glacier NP in the US was very nice but Banff is more spectacular and much more accessible. We get an extra treat on this drive. Aimee spots a small black bear walking in the ditch on the side of the highway.

August 17, 2007

August 17, 2007

From Waterton Lakes NP of Canada we drove north on Alberta’s Cowboy Trail past wheat fields being harvested to rolling ranchlands and grazing cattle. After a couple hours we reached the outskirts of Calgary where we turned west and entered Banff National Park. We snagged one of the last RV sites in the campground on the hill overlooking the town of Banff. The surrounding mountain scenery would be dramatic except Alberta seems to suffering the same fate as Glacier, forest fires and hazy smoke. I am very disappointed. I had been thru Banff once before on a business trip and was blown away by the scenery. This was a long drive out of the way for the view to be marred with haze.

Aimee and I unhitch our bikes and roll down the steep hill to town. On the way we get a good view of the Bow River, its waterfall, and the iconic Banff Springs Hotel on the far side of the river. At the bottom we park our bikes and walk thru downtown. It is also a mess with the main street under full construction. Between construction barriers and tourists Banff is a zoo. After an hour of shopping we ride along the river where we spot a large elk grazing in one of the parks. It is looking like rain so we head back the steep hill to the RV. Just in time before a brief shower hits.

August 16, 2007

August 16, 2007

In the morning we drive around the southern border of Glacier National Park over Marias Pass to the East entrance. Along the way we run into thick forest fire smoke again. We pass a staging camp for the firefighters. It is tent city. I guess when you fight fires you have to go where the job is and there aren’t usually a lot of hotels nearby.

As we approach the east side the terrain suddenly turns into dry flat grassland. The mountains on this side rise up like a high barrier wall next to the plains. The approach from this direction is much more dramatic. We stop at the visitor center at the east entrance. It is not huge but much better than the west side.

We have to make some tough choices today. Because we have to be back in Seattle in seven days we are not going to be able to see everything on my list. So we leave Glacier and drive up Chief Mountain Hwy to its international sister Waterton Lakes NP of Canada. We spend the afternoon exploring this smaller park seeing lots of deer and bighorn sheep along its Red Rock Canyon and Cameron Lake scenic drives. Waterton’s centerpiece is its pretty namesake lake that runs down the center. We spend the night at a hole-in-the-wall RV campground just outside the entrance. For some reason there are tiny gnats everywhere and we spend the rest of the evening swatting them.

August 15, 2007

August 15, 2007

There is only one road across Glacier National Park. It is called the Road to the Sun because it crosses the Continental Divide at 6600 ft elevation. It is an old road that was a marvel of engineering when it was built at the beginning of the last century. They are rebuilding it but unfortunately not widening it and our 22-foot motorhome is prohibited. That means we are forced to take the shuttle up to Logan’s Pass. It is another brush with government efficiency. This time we are waiting with a big crowd at the transit center. Slowly but surely shuttles come by but they are only allowing 8 to board despite having a capacity of 12. They respond that they need to save room for people down the line. The crowd groans. We eventually board and of course nobody gets on farther down.

It takes us 2 hours to make the 30-mile trip to Logan’s Pass. The top of Glacier NP is a vertical world of jagged mountain peaks and steep canyons. All carved and sculpted by Ice Age glaciers that once completely filled these valleys. Glacier NP should rightly be called “Melted Glacier NP” as we see little ice. All that remains of the glaciers are the long narrow lakes in the valley floors far below.

From Logan’s Pass we hike two miles to Hidden Lake thru a meadow of beautiful wildflowers. In the distance we can see Bighorn Sheep and right off the trail we watch several Mountain Goats munching on my wildflowers. The goats look like hunchbacked old men in thick white coats.

Hidden Lake provides another stunning vista. It lies in a mountain bowl encircled by steep rock faces. We eat our trail lunch while enjoying the ambience.

Back at Logan’s Pass we hike the beginning of the Highline trail that overlooks the road back down. A few hundred yards into it the trail narrows considerably hugging a sheer cliff face. It is too much for Aimee and we turn back and try to catch the next shuttle down. It is another adventure. I should have rented a car and drove up myself. But that would have also been problematic as parking is limited everywhere we have been. The park seems to be doing as much as they can to discourage tourism. Because the shuttle turned into an all day event we returned to same campsite as last night.

August 14, 2007

August 14, 2007

From Libby, MT we drove to Glacier National Park. What should have been a beautiful drive was marred by smoke from nearby forest fires. The haze was so thick at times it looked like morning fog. We had to drive with our lights on and vents closed. By the time we got to Glacier the worst of the smoke had dissipated.

Our first stop was the Visitor Center to get oriented with the Park. The visitor center was disappointingly tiny with little parking. It was merely a ranger station and small gift shop. Based on a recommendation we put on our hiking boots and waited for the park shuttle bus to take us to the Avalanche Creek Trailhead. After the fourth bus came and went because the drivers were ready for a break, we returned to the RV and drove ourselves to the trailhead. After some initial frustration we found a parking spot. Our first impressions of the park management are poor but unfortunately not atypical government efficiency. Why liberals would want more government control of our economy is beyond me.

About a half hour into our hike I have forgotten about bureaucracy and I am enjoying the exercise. The trail first follows a stream up a small slot canyon and then uphill thru a pretty forest. After an hour we emerge at Avalanche lake sitting at the bottom of a high mountain bowl. The view is stunning even if the sky is slightly hazy with smoke. After communing with Mother Nature for a while we head back and stay at a campground just outside the park.

August 13, 2007

August 13, 2007

It looks like Coeur d’Alene is not such a secret after all. Our drive north on US95 is full of cars, RVs, and traffic lights much of the way. Who would have thought that northern Idaho was such a tourist mecca. Once past Bonners Ferry, ID we turn east on Rt. 2 into Montana leaving the crowds behind. We are following the Kootenai River southeast. It is very scenic. Just past Troy, MT we stop and hike down to Kootenai waterfall.

Between traffic and the change to Mountain Time we didn’t make it very far and we stop for the evening in Libby, MT. Our camp neighbor tonight is a talkative old geezer peddling homemade walking canes.

August 12, 2007

August 12, 2007

Last night we took a shuttle bus back down to the dam. Grand Coulee Dam hosts the world’s largest laser light show on its surface every night during the summer. At the start, dam operators open spillways letting out a sheet of water flow turning the dam face into a white projection surface. It is like they flicked a switch and lowered the screen. The light show is cute but unmemorable.

In the morning we drive east to Spokane. We stop at their visitor center but don’t find anything interesting so we continue our drive east toward Montana. We cross into Idaho and stop at the Idaho visitor center. We learn about a free concert in the park in Coeur d’Alene and think that would be a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We guessed right. The rock-n-roll band is superb, the weather is delightful and downtown Coeur d’Alene seems a well-kept secret. It sits on a beautiful lake with pine-forested hills in the distance. Coeur d’Alene is very high on my list for a summer home.

After the concert we walk around downtown and then find a spot in a private RV park to the west along the Spokane River. After cocktail hour Aimee and I ride our bikes downtown along Centennial Trail past a pair of nesting Ospreys and have dinner at the Coeur d’Alene Resort restaurant complete with Idaho spuds and a view overlooking the lake.

August 11, 2007

August 11, 2007

From Ephrata, WA we drove northeast. The route took us along the valley of a steep black canyon called Grand Coulee. We stopped at the Dry Falls Interpretative Center to learn of the geology of the region. Besides being very dry, eastern Washington scabland is gouged with a number of coulees, canyons apparently carved by rivers but now high and dry. Grand Coulee is the largest.

This interpretative center overlooks what used to be a gigantic waterfall but is now also dry. Scientists couldn’t explain their formation until a lone geologist from the University of Chicago hypothesized floods of biblical proportions repeatedly devastated the area during the last Ice Age. He theorized that when the last glaciers advanced southward, one finger dammed the flow of a tributary of the Columbia River forming an immense lake in western Montana. Eventually the ice dams would burst inundating eastern Washington with a wall of water, carving huge canyons, and scattering boulders over the landscape. He was roundly mocked for this theory for forty years until it at last was found to be true. I find this story fascinating. My theory is that scientists will discover something similar hit central Russia with floodwaters rushing into the Black Sea giving rise to the biblical floods of the Middle East.

Grand Coulee continues north past the Dry Falls. At the far northern end a large butte, called Steamboat Rock, sits in the middle of the canyon. We stop at the State Park surrounding it, park the RV and don our hiking boots. We make the hour hike to the plateau atop it and enjoy the vista. This upper section of Grand Coulee is filled with water pumped from the Columbia River forming a reservoir for irrigation and recreation.

After our exercise of the day, we drive a little further north out of Grand Coulee and down into the Columbia River valley and the Grand Coulee Dam crossing it. We stop at the dam visitor center where we learn it is the largest dam in the US producing far more hydroelectric power than any other US facility. Three times Hoover Dam. I am shocked, as the dam doesn’t look very impressive to me at all. We spend the night at a private RV park on a hill overlooking the dam run by a delightful husband and wife team.

August 10, 2007

August 10, 2007

We are still on Chicago time so we rise early, stop at the local grocery to stock our trip, and head east on I90. It is chilly, but a nice break from the heat and humidity torturing the Midwest. From Seattle we head up into the pine forested Cascade Mountain range. Along the way we pullover at a rest stop where we learn that George McClellan as a young army officer surveyed this pass over the mountains. Many of the Civil War names had spent their early careers in the West either fighting Indians or scouting unknown territory.

Descending from the Cascades we enter Washington State’s eastern half. Rain clouds must never make it past the mountains, as this area is a sagebrush desert landscape. We had planned on driving to Grand Coulee today but we stopped along the way at Gingko Petrified Forest State Park in Vantage, WA. I couldn’t pass up a fossil site! Good thing as it was pretty interesting. The visitor center was small and poorly staffed but very informative nonetheless. Gingkoes and I go way back. My father loved trees and had what seemed like one of everything in our yard including four gingko trees. I just thought gingko was another common yard tree. It turns out Gingkoes are a primeval tree that had gone extinct in North America and would have disappeared from the planet except for the Chinese who cultivated the tree in their gardens for medicinal and religious purposes. The gingko is one of the few trees that have separate male and female versions.

Gingko leaf fossils are common but this park is the only place in the world where its petrified wood has ever been discovered. Fourteen million years ago this area was a temperate forest with a lot of volcanic activity. A volcano blast must have knocked trees down and then quickly buried them under a massive lava flow. The trees rather than decaying became mineralized. Erosion by the Columbia River is now exposing these once-buried fossils. After touring the visitor center and watching their film we hike a trail that winds thru these barren hills past petrified trees that have been partially uncovered. Although the hike is mostly uninteresting we need the exercise and it is a good warm-up for the future.

On the way out of town we stop at a Wild Horse Memorial that Aimee saw on a postcard. It is a set of metal sculptures that sit atop a hill overlooking the Columbia River gorge. We hike to the hilltop for a good view of the area. Afterwards we drive a little further east and get the last spot at a private campground in Ephrata, WA.

August 9, 2007

August 9, 2007

Vacation is over, back to seeing the world. It was a working vacation however. Aimee and I were committed to eliminating one of our two storage units here in Chicago. So most days we spent a couple hours going thru boxes and tossing and donating things we never used in many years. With some pruning and careful repacking we were successful and with a couple days to spare. So we will be a few dollars wealthier every month. We actually made some money too. Aimee got the bright idea to list a couple things on Craig’s List, the on-line garage sale site. She worked it well and she got hard cash for stuff we intended to donate to charity anyway. It was a gold mine for us. Next time I need something I am going to check there first.

We flew back to Seattle bright and early this morning. After retrieving the RV from storage and stowing our gear we headed to Camping World to check the status of our refrigerator part. We got good news and bad news. The part is finally in after six weeks. Unfortunately we can’t get in the shop till August 23. So we are going to do some traveling and circle back here in two weeks. We still need a refrigerator but the cooler and ice didn’t work well for us so we stopped at Wal-Mart and bought a mini-fridge that works on both 12volt and 110 AC. We are spending the night in the Seattle suburb of Issaquah to make sure everything is working well before we hit the road.

July 18, 2007

July 18, 2007

We are back in Itasca, IL getting our lives re-organized. We are committed to cutting back our storage burden here from two to just one unit. That means we have to spend a few hours a day going thru boxes and discarding things we thought might come in handy at some imaginary time in the future. We are also discarding useful items we would prefer to upgrade sooner rather than later. It is a little easier now a year later.

Tonight we are relaxing in Itasca’s central park listening to an oldies band. Unfortunately it is cut short by an incoming thunderstorm. And a thunderstorm it is. The lightning flashes continuously for hours. After watching it from a dry couch for most of the night I get the bright idea to catch one on film. Photographing lightning at night is not for the impatient. Inevitably it flashes where I am not pointing the camera and my trigger finger is tiring of holding the auto focus down in anticipation. But stubborn is my middle name and I finally got one that resembles the throbbing blood vessels in my arms.

July 12, 2007

July 12, 2007

After the 4th holiday festivities, we drove with my parents to their home in Godfrey, IL. I saw an article about the St. Louis Science Museum in one of my father’s AAA travel magazines so Aimee and I went to investigate today. The museum is not big but has tons of hands-on exhibits designed for the younger generation. Fortunately Aimee is married to a big kid.

We spend most of our time in the optical illusion area trying out each of the effects. When we are finished we are bug-eyed and seeing double. Our vision of the world depends on a strange union of our eyes and brains and it is amazing how easy it is to fool our perceptions.

On the drive back, we stopped in downtown Alton to see the new monument for the final Lincoln-Douglas debate that took place here in 1858.

July 4, 2007

July 4, 2007

July 4 is a special day for us. Last year on this date Aimee and I officially went “on the road” in the RV. We returned to the scene of the crime at my sister’s house in suburban Milwaukee, WI to celebrate independence with my relatives.

The village was nice enough to schedule some fireworks to commemorate our one-year anniversary.

June 29, 2007

June 29, 2007

Another chapter in our adventure comes to a close. Our Pacific Coast tour took us over 4000 miles crisscrossing from beach to mountain and back again. A break in Chicago will allow us time to relax, catch up on our mail, plan our next journey and HOPEFULLY let our replacement refrigerator show up. In early August we fly back to Seattle. From there we plan to explore the Mountain Time zone of the US. Till then the author is on vacation.

June 28, 2007

June 28, 2007

We spend the morning packing up, draining all the water, and taking the RV to the storage lot. We catch a cab to the airport and hang out till our planes depart for Chicago. I feel like I was in a comedy skit. I am never in a hurry to board the plane, so when I finally walked up to the jet way with my “group 4” boarding pass, there were only about ten passengers left waiting. Still the ticket agent, who had to be new or really conscientious, went very slowly thru each of the prior seating groups, pausing, looking around, and announcing last call for each one. I had a beer for lunch so I enjoyed the moment.

June 27, 2007

June 27, 2007

We have a free day before our flight out of the Seattle-Tacoma airport, so we decide to visit Mt. Rainier National Park. On the few days when the skies are cloud-free around here, you can’t miss Rainier. It towers over the metropolitan area. Unlike the Rockies that consist of a continuous line of peaks, the Cascades Mountains seem to be fewer in number and more isolated. I am sure this is because of their volcanic origin. We drive around the north side of the park and enter the northeast gate. We proceed up the mountain to the Sunrise Visitor Center for great views of the mountain. Rainier is pretty much a drive-up mountain. It is the fifth oldest national park established in 1899.

We take a look at the exhibits which are mainly about Rainier’s past volcanic activity and the cities most at risk when she blows again.

At 2pm we take the Ranger walk. It is led by an elementary school teacher from Philadelphia who works here during his summer break. On the walk he tells us about his experience climbing Rainier a couple years ago. Using a telescope we spot a line of climbers roped together making the climb. Since Rainier has more snow on its peak than all the rest of the Cascades combined, the trek is over treacherous glaciers where you have to worry about sliding down the mountain or falling thru a crevasse.

After the ranger walk we hike around a little bit. There are still patches of snow on the trails making hiking unpleasant in tennis shoes. Plus we are too early for the fields of mountain wildflowers. After a short while we abandon the mountain, drive back down and stay in an RV park in Puyallup, WA. When we get there we find the park had some unwanted excitement this morning. In most of the metropolitan RV parks there are quite a few “year-round” campers. I think mostly they are construction workers following their work around the country. A propane deliveryman forgot to shut off the electricity and sparked a fire completely gutting one of the “year-rounder’s” Fifth Wheel Trailers. Must have been pretty good fire because it also scorched both his neighbor’s rigs. Nobody was hurt but sadly the owner’s pet dog wasn’t able to escape the blaze.

June 26, 2007

June 26, 2007

From Hoquiam, WA we finish our journey around the Olympic Peninsula ending near the Seattle area. We stop at the local Camping World to check on the status of our refrigerator order. Unfortunately nothing had been ordered yet! We also find a parking spot for the RV at a Public Storage facility because we have flight reservations to the Chicago area on Thursday. We spend the night at a KOA in Kent, WA. Surprisingly one of the more expensive parks, as much as the ones on the East Coast.

June 25, 2007

June 25, 2007

Saturday we saw the snow-capped peaks of Olympic National Park. Our goal today is to circle west seeing the other two ecosystems of the park, the temperate rain forest, and the seashore. The route is quite scenic. The road is lined with fields of Daisy wildflowers. We pass a very pretty Lake Crescent. The water is extremely clear and encircled by rolling hills of evergreen.

We reach the town of Forks and stop at the Tourist Office to use the Internet. Forks is the capital of the logging industry on the Olympic peninsula. Unfortunately the Timber Museum is closed on Mondays and we are too late for the 9am logging tour of the area. After discovering we are from Chicago one of the volunteers drags us on a little nature trail behind the office. He is a retired logging truck driver and tells us all about the trees and plants in the area. Aimee likes the yellow Salmon berries that are growing all along the trail. They taste like blackberries.

On the west side of the Olympic peninsula we drive back into the National Park to visit the Hoh Rain Forest. We join a ranger talk that is starting just as we arrive. This area gets 140 inches of rain a year and the trees grow like they are on steroids. A cross-section of a local tree shows almost quarter-inch growth rings. Western Hemlocks and Sitka Spruces dominate the forest. Most of the trees are dripping with hanging moss. Oddly we are having a sunny day in the rain forest although both of us are wearing raincoats just in case.

We continue our drive around the park, along the ocean, and stop in the town of Hoquiam, WA for the night.

June 24, 2007

June 24, 2007

We got up early this morning and walked down to the pier to catch the first ferry to Victoria, British Columbia. Victoria is on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The water on the crossing is as smooth as glass and we pull directly into the downtown inner harbor. Victoria must be doing pretty well as the small harbor is ringed with new apartment or condominium buildings.

Since the morning weather is still cool out we decide to first stop at the Royal British Columbia Museum. The travelling Titanic Exhibit happens to be here and I haven’t had a chance to see it yet. We spend about 90 minutes running thru Titanic. I could have spent more time as the presentation was well done. There aren’t really a lot of artifacts but what they have are in very good condition considering that the Titanic was lost 95 years ago on April 15, 1912. They also issue us random passenger identities. Aimee happened to get first class as Margaret Brown, who survived and was forever known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown. I was a little known second-class passenger. I didn’t make it. Many of the unlucky passengers had been booked on other ships but at the last minute transferred to the Titanic because of a coal strike and the resulting shortage of ship fuel. One of the other 1250 lost souls was John Jacob Astor IV. It was his great-grandfather who we learned about four days ago as a mogul in the American fur trade out here and founder of the town of Astoria, OR.

After perusing the Titanic Exhibit we watch the IMAX movie, Titanica. It is about some Russian exploration of the Titanic wreck. It is quite disappointing. Afterwards we sail thru the rest of the museum in record time. The only thing I see of interest is a collection of old Totem poles.

After the museum we walk around the downtown Victoria. Victoria is the capital of British Columbia and is pretty and charming. It looks like it has a very livable downtown. Many of the people we talked to though had an accent and a kind of British mannerism about them. It almost felt like we were in a different country. In the late afternoon we take the ferry back to Port Angeles, WA for the night.

June 23, 2007

June 23, 2007

From Tacoma, WA we head northwest to the Olympic peninsula. Along the way we stop in Sequim, the lavender capital of the US. We are too early. The flowers don’t bloom till later in the summer. We stop anyway and have lunch at a cute retro diner.

A little further west in Port Angeles, we enter Olympic National Park and stop at the Visitor Center. They give us the lay of the land. From there we drive the 17 miles uphill to Hurricane Ridge where we get a view of the Olympic Mountains. Even though they aren’t that high they have a pretty good snow-pack on top of them. It is drizzling and cloudy. Also spring has just come to the mountains and the wildflowers have yet to reach full bloom.

We spend the night in Port Angeles and eat at a pretty good Thai restaurant for dinner.

June 22, 2007

June 22, 2007

On a whim we stop at the Mt St. Helens Washington State Visitor Center we passed by yesterday. Aimee is glad we did, as she likes this one best. It focuses more on the human element of the eruption: from those who barely survived the fury and those who didn’t, to the effects of the ash fallout on the lives of nearby residents.

I don’t remember much about the St. Helens eruption and its aftermath. It happened on May 18, 1980. My mind was not on current events at the time. I had just finished final exams, graduated college and taken off on a short vacation out to the East coast with a friend. It would be a few weeks before I was tossed into the real world, working everyday and watching the news.

The big eruption caused a lot of local damage, but that wasn’t the end of it. St. Helens erupted a few more times in the ensuing months blanketing the region in ash that covered everything, clogged up every car, and shut down most transportation. Even ships in the Columbia River ran aground from silt filling the channel.

The mountain is still in the clouds so we take off north on I-5 towards Seattle. The traffic is pretty heavy most of the way. We stop at a private RV park in the Tacoma area for the evening.

June 21, 2007

June 21, 2007

It is foggy and drizzling this morning. We were going to explore the north coast headlands at Cape Disappointment but the weather is going to make visibility poor. So instead we head inland up the Columbia River towards I-5. There we go north to the exit for Mt. St. Helens Volcanic National Monument. On the road east there are five Visitor Centers. The first one is state. We decide to skip it until this evening. The second one seems to be just a commercial outfit. They do have an interesting compilation of the news stories at the time. Weyerhauser who does most of the logging in the area runs the third. Their attendant suggested we go to the mountain first since the weather is forecasted to get worse. It is not raining here but the clouds are looking ominous. And unfortunately St. Helens’ top is in the clouds.

The drive up follows the Toutle River. It is small and murky with banks that look like volcanic dust. I am surprised after 27 years it is still choked with ash. The end of the line is the Johnston Ridge Observatory. There I find out that the National Forest Service runs this monument and again my National Parks pass doesn’t work here. And the admission price is steep. Despite having another month left on the pass, I am forced to buy the new combined agency pass. I guess I shouldn’t complain as I saved a ton of money with the old pass over the last 11 months.

At the observatory we first listen to a ranger talk about the eruption. The ranger is a young woman who saw the eruption as a girl and was motivated to become a geologist. Now she works here in the summer and in Hawaii Volcano Park in the winter. My kind of job! She gives a very entertaining talk with a series of poster-size photos. Mt. St. Helens used to be the Mt. Fuji of the USA with a perfect snow-capped conical top. It has also been the most active of the Cascade Range volcanoes. The lava at this volcano is very thick and doesn’t flow well. The pressure buildup tends to release explosively. In early 1980 it started acting up and grew a huge magma bulge on its side. An earthquake triggered the bulge to fall off in the largest landslide in recorded history. The landslide filled in the Toutle River valley washing away 26 of 27 bridges across it. With the pressure cap off, Mt St. Helens then blew sideways leveling the forest north for miles. Now the volcano was free to spew ash and poisonous gasses out its stack, which it did for the rest of the day. Primordial Destruction!

Afterwards we watch a movie about the eruption in the observatory theater. It is well designed, for when the show ends, the curtain rises and we see the volcano on display out the window. The top is still in clouds though. We walk a little bit of the trail in the area. Even after 27 years this part is still barren of trees. Patches of beautiful purple wildflowers cover this ridge. On other ridges we can see downed logs littering the slopes like toothpicks.

A few miles back down the road we stop at the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center where we listen to another excellent ranger talk. This crusty old character gives a highly entertaining talk about life before the eruption. The area used to be a beautiful fishing and camping spot for locals. The centerpiece, Spirit Lake, is still full of logs and debris. Below us is Coldwater Lake. It is brand new, formed when the landslide dammed up Coldwater Creek.

The cloud over the top of St. Helens has gotten smaller but it hasn’t budged an inch. It looks like I am not going to get a clear shot of the crater so we head back down the road. We make a short stop at the Forest Learning Center before it closes to watch a couple short films on logging operations. Then we spend the night at a small RV park a little further down the road.