With Vancouver in our rearview mirrors, we crossed the border and proceeded to Seattle. They gave us a great end spot at the RV park and the location was fantastic! It was only 30 minutes to downtown, with a mall, movie theater and Walmart Supercenter nearby. This is very unusual, since typically RV parks are not allowed in town.
Our first stop was Pike Place Market located on Puget Sound, it is the oldest continuously running market in the US, having been in operation since 1907. It was lively and crowded this Thursday afternoon, with beautiful fruits, vegetables and flowers. We bought Rainier cherries (if you’ve never had one, try to find one. They are fantastic and tasted like a cross between a cherry and a peach); “Oh My God” nectarines; “Holy Shit” peaches (both lived up to their names) and a huge $10 bouquet of flowers. The fish hawkers were fun to watch as they tossed large salmon back and forth like they were unloading a boat and we selected a few pastries (of course) at a bakery that had “Texas donuts” bigger than a dinner plate. Even with all the snacking on fruits and other delicacies, we were still hungry so we headed down the road to Serious Pie for lunch. (It was recommended on the food network and while it was good it wasn’t great. They did have one very unique feature. They had a mandatory 20% service charge which they stated went to the restaurant, not the staff. They claimed that the staff were paid a good wage and had benefits so didn’t need tips)
The Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum was next door to the Space Needle. I have always loved art glass and one of the few things we kept when we sold everything was a large piece of Murano art glass we bought in Venice a few years ago, now in my mom’s safekeeping. The displays were stunning, some inside in dark rooms, others outside in the gardens (want Dessa to be happy, take her somewhere that has beautiful art glass displayed amongst flower gardens). They had bowls, balls, slender reeds, huge chandeliers and even glass trees; all in a thousand brilliant colors. The little theater was packed but showed several very interesting short videos about Chihuly’s life and his creative process.
Nearby was the Museum of Pop Culture, an extraordinary building made of wavy metal that looked a bit like a drape. One side was a color changing red and the other was gold and silver, with a commuter train running right through the middle. Behind it was a very cool playground area that seemed to be for big kids as well as smaller ones. There were buskers about and we watched amused as a guy aggressively played a violin while dancing up a storm, it was quite the show.
Mount Rainier and North Cascades National Parks were each two hours away but in opposite directions. We decided on Mount Rainier and Bill rented a trailer for the motorcycles. This allowed us to ride in comfort for the four hours of boring roads to and from the park and better enjoy our estimated six hours of great riding within the park. Our first stop was the morning light on the east side of Mount Rainer and a great twisty road took us up to where we were as high as the glaciers at the top of a nearby peak, with super views of the top of the mountain and the lake and river in the valley below. It was cool to be close enough to see the smoky looking sublimation of the glaciers. Paradise Valley, on the southwestern side, was the most popular area known for its fields covered in a blanket of wildflowers, right up my alley. Changing from our boots to running shoes, we hiked a couple of miles up along the busy but pretty trail. In the end, we were gone from 8am to 8pm, a long day but lots of fun.
Seattle is lovely (except for some not so fun traffic) and we will definitely return, the weather has been perfect and we still have to go to North Cascades National Park.
Olympic National Park was 88 miles away, if you were willing to take two ferries which are very expensive when you are driving a rig like ours. Instead we drove the extra 50 miles around the southern tip of Puget Sound, through Tacoma, before heading out onto the Olympic Peninsula and Port Angeles on the north coast of Washington, where Victoria Island, BC can be seen only 24 miles away across the Salish Sea. The weather was gray and threatened rain but with only two days in the area, we had limited options. Fortunately, it didn’t rain much at all, so we rode the motorcycles up Highway 112, along the coast, to Neah Bay on the farthest northwestern point of the contiguous US. Even though it is not listed on the top ten best motorcycle roads in the USA, it should be! It was so twisty, they gave up on posting S curve signs everywhere and instead they would just show the S and say 25mph next 4 miles. Over and over we saw similar signs and at one point a big truck behind us rode down the center for miles trying to reduce the curves, while we reveled in each one. In addition to the curves, the road varied between long stretches of tree tunnels and long sections of the coast with Canada across the way. Lunch was fish and chips at a crab shack in a tiny fishing town, sitting in Adirondack chairs on the shore.
I would have repeated the ride again the next day but we came for Olympic National Park, so we jumped back on the bikes and rode 18 miles up to the mile-high Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center. The park is 922 thousand acres with three distinct environments: mountainous, coastal and rainforest. They have herds of Roosevelt Elk, mostly seen on the west coast side and so many mountain goats that many of the roads were closed so they could be captured and relocated, we saw neither but we did see Bambi and her mom. We were on the mountainous side of the park, where we could see at least a hundred peaks and valleys. Beautiful, with tons of different wild flowers all along the winding park road and in the valley. While it was lovely, it wasn’t as wow as some of the parks we have visited. With the other park areas a full three hours away, we will have to come back to see the rest…and ride that fantastic road again.
As we drove into Portland, Oregon we were amazed to see neighborhoods built over the water on the Willamette River that runs through town. They were in groups of fifty or so houses, constructed along short piers with about five houses per pier. They looked like normal houses you’d find in any nice neighborhood. Many even had typical garages except they opened up on the water and stored boats. Looked like a really fun idea for a place to live.
We visited the Portland Saturday Market, where they claim to be the oldest continuously running “outdoor” market in the nation. It was a very nice day, sunny and seventies and they had great music and food vendors and a fun vibe. Bill and I often wonder why Dallas has nothing like these outdoor markets to offer, we really enjoy them. We did one of our city walks and saw some of the art installations around town, as well as stumbling across a hip-hop dance show and a Chinese Festival. On the way home, we drove to the famous VooDoo Donuts but there were about fifty people in line so we bailed.
The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area was not too far away, so we mapped out a motorcycle ride to see half a dozen of the many waterfalls. Multnomah Falls is the most famous of them all and for good reason, it was easily the most beautiful waterfall I have ever seen. It drops 620 feet in two sections, with a bridge spanning the top of the lower fall and it is surrounded by rock cliffs covered in moss and ferns. Latourell, Horsetail and Elowah falls were all pretty but paled by comparison. Crown Point was at the top of a cliff and provided a great view of the river and gorge but it was a very hazy day so the pictures were not great. Thunder Island Brewing was our lunch stop for delicious cider (I was forced to have a diet Pepsi. You’d think a place with such good cider could serve Coke products) and a nice view of Bridge of the Gods, named after a natural bridge created by a landslide.
After a few days in Portland we boarded a plane to Dallas for our mid-trip visit home. The only downside of our vagabond lifestyle is missing family. We miss everyone but especially the grandkids and were so happy to see them after two months away. At five and three years old they are at a wonderful age, learning so much and now big enough to go lots of fun places. We crammed as much fun as possible into our visit, going to two movies (Lion King and Toy Story 4 both of which they loved), the Dallas World Aquarium, some pool time and two get togethers at our cute AirBnB plus an overnight with the boys. The three cousins love to play with Bilbo and with each other, with Maverick and Elderly becoming the best of friends. A highlight of the trip was being able to walk Hunter to school for his first day of Kindergarten. It was a great visit but totally exhausting.
We took a couple of days to recover in Portland before we moved back into Washington for a visit to Mount St Helen. The 2008 eruption obliterated everything within eight miles of the cone and blew down all the trees for another 19 miles, scorching 230 square miles of forest. This damage was still obvious on our scenic and twisty two-hour motorcycle ride from Cougar through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and up to Windy Ridge. At the viewpoint, we looked out over Spirit Lake. When the volcano erupted, the landslide drove the lake water 850’ up the far slope and turned the lake into a bubbling soup of bacteria, trees, dirt and plants raising the surface almost 200’. Within three years the water began to recover and now, less than 40 years later, it is pristine and contains more aquatic life than before the eruption (it recovered much better and faster than the surrounding forests). Now a peaceful blue, it is still ringed with a thick layer of bleached tree bones. Across the lake from our look out
were large rocky hills that were actually chunks of the mountain that blew off, and in the water, at the end of the lake closest to the mountain, there are two piles of tree bones where the lodge once stood. The volcano is still active and appeared to be smoking when we were there, though it was hard to tell if it was smoke or steam or dust swirling around the crater.
Our second stop at Mt St Helen was Ape Cave, a lava tube created 2000 years ago during a previous eruption. With limited time, we chose to hike the lower cave which is only ¾ of a mile long and a mostly easy walk. The upper cave is 1.5 miles long and is much more difficult, requiring scrambling over rocks, climbing and crawling through narrow spaces (being a little claustrophobic, not my first choice. I was actually a little worried about being so far into and under the mountain even on the lower cave but the lava tube was so large it wasn’t a problem. It was however the darkest place I have ever been). Discovered in 1947, the cave got its name from the sponsor of the scout troop who explored it, the St Helen Apes and it is believed that Apes is a reference to Bigfoot. The constant temp inside the cave is 42 degrees, so we dressed warm and brought all the flashlights we had (none of which are great but at least one of them was effective). The cave was quite cool and more colorful than you might expect but a little monotonous. The big highlight is the “Meatball”, a big round rock suspended in an overhead channel. If we come back we’ll try the upper cave (and I’ll do my best to hold it together in the narrow spots).
Bill found a kite festival in Long Beach, Washington, so we detoured to the coast, crossing the Astoria-Megler Bridge (the longest continuous truss bridge in North America) to check it out. It was a tiny town, so I was skeptical that it was worth the stop but Bill said it was an “International” festival. We drove down in the rain…not a good sign but the next day was clear and sunny and it turned out to be a good time. There were probably only two or three hundred kite enthusiasts on the beach but there were kites of all types, including some giant ones and lots of food vendors including an award-winning BBQ guy from Houston. They set a world record for flying Quad-line kites (a kite with two handles and four lines allowing full control of direction and positioning) in a grid pattern and we also watched while the teams made all kinds of shapes in smaller groups, like exploding hearts and circles. Bill has three kites that we have carried around for years and the festival inspired him to take his own quad down to the beach the next day. (in my defense, flying my stunt kites requires a steady wind which is not easy to find in most places. Of course, some of the newer kites need almost no wind including some you can fly in a gymnasium with just body movement so I could increase my collection to 4 or 5 if you’d like) Eyes rolling.
Back in Oregon, we spent a few days in Eugene riding our bikes (bicycles and motorcycles) and checked out several of the covered bridges in the area (it was quite surprising to see how many they have). We found another VooDoo Donuts, without a line and got some delicious cream filled delicacies like a dinner plate sized Cock and Balls and their signature Voodoo Doll (and a fabulous banana crueler covered with chocolate and caramel). In case you were wondering…Bill had the cock and I had the balls (definitely TMI). Interesting facts about Oregon, it is against the law to pump your own gas, so there are attendants at all gas stations and they have no sales tax, both good things.
Continuing our National Park theme for this trip, we moved on to a town about 75 miles from Crater Lake. The first day was gray and not great for photography, but we hopped on the motorcycles to ride the twisty road up to the park. It was in the 80’s when we started but soon started to cool off as the elevation rose from 1000 feet to 7000+. It was very interesting because we didn’t climb a mountain, the road just rose so gradually that we did not even realize we were climbing. By the time we got to the rim, the skies were getting pretty dark and it was cold and windy, so we headed back home to try to avoid the rain (we almost made it, fortunately it was pretty light).
The next day we had blue skies so we headed back up in the truck for some hiking and pictures. The lake in the crater was created when Mount Mazama erupted and then collapsed; the lake forming thanks to rain and snow melt. At 1,949 feet, it is the deepest lake in the US, 2nd in North America and 10th in the world. Given its source water, it is one of the purest and clearest bodies of water in the world and a beautiful sapphire blue. The lake is five to six miles across, with the crater rim rising steeply over 2000 feet above the lake and as we circled stopping at the overlooks we were amazed by the stunning beauty (I was surprised that there were still some snow pockets in the crater, the temp was in the mid 60’s and it’s August. Not sure why they haven’t melted). There are two islands in lake, Wizard Island is a volcanic cone that rises 755 feet above the surface and is covered with tall trees and Phantom Ship is a small formation of rock pillars that we didn’t think look much like a ship at all. I took 300 photos and they were so great it was not easy to reduce them to just a few, this is a park you have to see yourself.
Our last two stops in Oregon were along the coast at Bandon and Gold Beach. We never did figure out why Bill took us to Bandon, it was a tiny town without much to offer, other than some cool sculptures made of trash from the ocean, by a group called Washed Ashore. We keep a running Evernote with details about where we are going and what we are planning to do in each location but there was nothing indicated (I’m sure I read something that said this was a great place to visit, I just forgot to add it to the Evernote). The coast is rugged and scenic but that is pretty much it. We were there for the Labor Day weekend and I found an event called Circles in the Sand, where some artists would gather and draw designs in the sand creating a prayer or meditation labyrinth. They started at 7am (low tide), so we arrived with the GoPro to take time lapse photography. It was very foggy but they were drawing, so we set up and I walked down the beach looking for tide pools while Bill flew his drone. It was very cool how they drew the outline, then added all kinds of sea creatures and designs inside and decorated some of them with shells and driftwood, then filled in some areas using sand rakes. The result was awesome and lasted only a few hours before being washed away by the rising tide. They repeated the process the next day, which was clear and sunny, so we went back to repeat our pictures and time lapse (since the GoPro died the first day before the art was finished). At Gold Beach, another tiny town, we had notes about the Samuel Boardman Scenic Corridor with several overlooks of the Oregon Coast. We discovered that foggy weather is more common than clear along this part of the coast and our first try at driving the corridor was a bust due to zero visibility, on our second try the fog was mostly gone but several of the overlooks were down some unmarked, poorly maintained, paths that took us nowhere good. After three unsuccessful hikes, we gave up, time to head to (hopefully) sunny California.
See all our pictures here.
Great pics and looks like yall had so much fun! I will be in Portland at the end of the month. Mostly to spend time with family, but also hoping to fit in a few adventures while I am there. he-he!