Category: worries

Note: After spending most of the day in La Conner, Washington trying to catch up on posts, I decide that for the rest of the vacation I will spend my time enjoying where I am instead of writing blog posts.  I have plenty of notes so here is my first post after returning home.

So here we are in La Conner, Washington. We decide that today will be a walking-around kind of day. A day where I can catch up on postings and watch the boats sail by in the channel below our window.  There are interesting Native American reproductions across the channel and a mishmash of old an new buildings in town.

We venture out around lunch time to find some tasty treats of the sea and look at the architecture of the town.  The architecture is somewhat of a mishmash. There are older buildings and also a startling 1970’s style post office. What were they thinking!?

We decide to have lunch at the La Conner Brewing Company. Their menu looks good and there is a large board posting their beers according to alcohol content and hoppiness.  John decides on the Fishtown Summer Ale and I have a wheat beer.

For lunch I have crab cakes that are kind of overwhelmed by the sweet spicy chili sauce and John has  wood-fired chipotle clams. It is one of the best dishes of the trip so far.

After lunch we have a little siesta and watch the boat go by. (And I write more catch-up posts.)

After the sun goes down we venture out again in search of dinner.  We try the Oyster and Thistle which is the highest rated restaurant in town.  Unfortunately the kitchen is in the weeds. In the room in which we are seated, no one has food. Our server aggressively suggest we had better order a salad since it will be a while until any main courses are coming. We are a bit too full from lunch for this and decline. The waitperson touches me a couple of time which I really don’t like at all!! She says our bread is baking and after a longish wait we get four slices of bread in a basket. Sigh.

Finally our entrees arrive.

I have curried shrimp and scallops in a lukewarm sauce with mushy rice.  John has a paella of clams, duck confit, chorizo, prawns, escargot, and the kitchen sink served in a bowl. There is no paella pan and no crispy rice. These dishes are okay but not a big success.

Looking forward to Vancouver tomorrow!!

We get an early start today. We are traveling across the top of the Olympic Peninsula to Port Townsend and catching a ferry from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island. First business first, though, is a stop at Mary Clark Rd. with a picture of the aforementioned Mary Clark (now Mary Pilat.) We have no idea who this Mary Clark was but we found this road on our last trip up here and it deserves and updated picture.

The trip along the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula is beautiful with tall trees and sparkling lakes. We arrive at Port Townsend shortly before lunch. We stop at the Visitor’s Center and get another fistful of brochures and maps listing the sights in and around Port Townsend. It seems that most of Port Townsend was originally built around 1890 in the Victorian style. We have a map now describing the most interesting of these structures.

The lady at the Visitor’s Center recommends Doc’s for lunch. It is right on the water.

John has a Port Townsend Stout and we both have salads plus clams and mussels in a white wine sauce.  The downside is that there is way too much garlic in the dish but otherwise the shellfish is nicely cooked and delicious.

We have some time to kill before our ferry reservation at 2:45 PM.  It’s a good thing that I looked to see whether you needed a reservation because many of the crossings are sold out. In the meantime we look around Port Townsend and take a trip out to Fort Worden to see the lighthouse.

Finally it is time to drive onto the ferry. It is a beautiful day to make the crossing so we sit on the sun deck to enjoy it.

On the other side is Whidbey Island and the land is used for farming. We see lots of signs for blueberries. We are driving from island to island now and there is spectacular scenery at Deception Pass. A group of sailors led by Joseph Whidbey, part of the Vancouver Expedition, found and mapped Deception Pass on June 7, 1792. George Vancouver gave it the name “Deception” because it had misled him into thinking Whidbey Island was a peninsula. (Wikipedia)

We are headed to the Channel Lodge and after a long day’s worth of driving what could be better than having our intrepid GPS, Jack, take us to the wrong place by about 12 miles. But ultimately we find our way and check into the okay but expensive Channel Lodge in La Conner, Washington.  The place could do with a facelift.

We wander around downtown a bit and have dinner at Nell Thorn. I have an excellent salad and some calamari which are only rings, no tentacles. John has fried oysters.

Our evening ends with some walking and a friendly encounter with some other tourists.

 

Our plan for today is to visit the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park and then drive out to the most northwestern point in the continental United States.

What a difference eight years makes! The last time we were here in this remote corner of the Northwest, there were very few visitors and we were able to enjoy a peaceful walk through the rain forest. This time, however, there are so many people – people playing music, babies crying, frustrated parents trying to get their kids to smile for the camera, kids running on the trails and off the trails, annoyed drivers not being able to find parking spaces, foreign visitors who don’t understand what is permissible, Americans who don’t understand what is permissible, and on and on. This celebration of 100 years of the National Park Service has strained the capacity of the parks.

We get to the Hoh visitor center early enough that we can find parking in the overflow lot. We decide to take the Hall of Mosses Trail.

Along this trail are interpretive signs explaining the cycle of life in the rainforest.

The forest is fascinating. I love the moss.

After our hike we head back to the our room for lunch and then head out towards Neah Bay near Flattery Point, the most northwestern place in the continental U.S. We stop along the way to search for whales (zero) and otters (also zero.) The body of water here is the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Investigating further we find that Juan de Fuca was Greek rather than Spanish and the Strait was named by an Englishman after him. All these waterways in the Northwest were caused by glaciation.

Reaching the road’s end, the area is the reservation of the Cape People, the Makah Tribe. The Makah were named by surrounding Native Americans with a name meaning “people generous with food.” Their flag symbol shows a red and white thunderbird with a whale in its talons.

After our excursion it is time to make dinner. The Quillayute River Resort provides each unit with a Weber grill. Tonight we’ll be having hamburgers!

Lastly, another beautiful view of flowers at the Quillayute River Resort.

Wow, I am running behind on posting. After spending a long time doing the last marymom and Clark and Lewis posts when I wanted to be doing other things, I went on strike. Now it seems that the only loser in this was me. I need to keep current or else it becomes overwhelming. I don’t know whether I will get back to writing Clark and Lewis stories because they take so long. Damn you punctuation!

Anyway, we leave the house in Westport and look to find things along the way to Forks, Washington that we want to see. Our first plan is to go to the Polson home and museum in Hoquiam and to see the tall ships including the Mary Washington of Pirates of the Caribbean fame in Aberdeen. As it turns out the Polson stuff is closed on Tuesdays and the tall ships are out of port. Sigh. Then I remember seeing a sign for a rainforest other than the Hoh so we decide we will find it.

We stop in Hoquiam at the Visitor’s Center. Jean, the nice lady there, gives us a ton of ideas of things to do and lots of pamphlets. (John loves to save this stuff!) We start by taking a look at the “Historic Aberdeen Mansion” which looks like a biggish Victorian house. There are nice trees and plants there, though.

We stop in Hoquiam for lunch and I take an election photo. I wished I had taken a photo of the one for Takko. We amuse ourselves making stupid jokes about their names.

After lunch we find the Quinault Rainforest and hike a short interpretive trail.

There are many large trees along the trail. I especially like the nurse logs which are fallen trees who support the growth of new trees. The new trees form a colonnade along the log and their roots wrap around the old trunk. The log serves as a repository of water during dry times for the new trees.

Down the road a bit is the World’s Record Sitka Spruce. We cannot miss this!

It’s down a trail that has lots of beautiful foliage.

Then we get to the tree itself and it is immense!

We are staying a cute apartment type inn a few miles outside of Forks, Washington.

 

The Quillayute Resort is so picturesque with beautiful flowers and the river right outside the door.

 

We are definitely taking this vacation pretty easy. Sleeping in (until almost 6 AM), having a lot of pajama time, taking a nap or two, and heading out in the afternoon to see what can be seen. These two days we concentrate on Westport and don’t wander far afield. Westport is located on a peninsula on the south side of the entrance to Grays Harbor from the Pacific Ocean. The Westport Marina is the largest marina on the actual coast of the northwest U.S. The marina is home to a lot of commercial fishing boats. We walk around the docks and take a look at the Maritime Museum.

We stop by the Maritime Museum just in time for closing. So we walk around the outside and look at the exhibits. There are many skeletons of blue and gray whales. Enormous!

We also notice that there is a fishing derby going on. The winner is the person who catches the biggest fish in different categories. Maybe they are all waiting until the last minute but the whole time we were down there only one person came in with a fish.

After watching the incredibly exciting (not) fish derby we head to check on the tennis court that I found by looking on Google maps. It is cracked and in bad shape. Two little boys say that someone has tried to burn it down recently.  We are not sure how that would work but we decide to give tennis a pass tomorrow.

We stop at the grocery store and pick up some chicken and vegetables to make for dinner.

After dinner we take a walk down the beach. Some people are building a big bonfire, someone else is driving their truck down the beach. This is the most activity we’ve seen on any beach. We find some sand dollars (related to urchins) to bring home to Nathan and Sam. But the weather is turning colder and it is time to head back to the house.

On Monday we didn’t do much. Mostly just sat around in comfy clothes and did puzzles and such. Late in the day we went out to see Washington’s tallest lighthouse and buy something for dinner.

Tomorrow we head north to the Olympic National Park and the rainforests.

 

 

 

 

When I was planning this trip I looked at the distances between stops to decide whether the driving was do-able in a day. We usually like to limit the driving to no more than four hours so we can stop and see things along the way. The distance from Bandon to Westport was 324 miles. That’s a little longer than I like but the rental looked good and it would be a fun trip up the coast.

Maybe 300+ miles is okay if you are driving 75 mph but it is definitely not so good when you are averaging around 45 mph. The road is windy and there are a lot of small towns with speed limits of 25 to 30 mph. Also there is a lot of traffic. So we end up leaving at 8 AM and getting to Westport around 5 PM. Plus there are a lot of bridges and cliffs so John drives the whole thing. My bad.

We do make one short stop at the Alsea Bay Bridge Interpretative Center to learn all about transportation in Oregon in the 19th and 20th centuries and the man, Conde McCullough, who was the architect of the bridges. The bridge over the Alsea Bay that McCullough designed has been replaced but there is a model at the museum and they have saved the art deco pillars at the beginning and end of the bridge. It’s a quick visit since we are under time pressure but interesting and informative.

On and on John drives with just a very short lunch break. Finally we are at the Oregon/Washington border. Looming before us is the very long, high, narrow bridge across the Columbia River.  It is pretty freaky.

Finally around 5PM we pull into the driveway of our rental for the next 3 days. The inside looks and smells like a new house but on the outside the weather and poor building materials have made it look a little shabby. The inside is really nice, though.

John schleps in all our stuff while I try to organize it. We discuss what to have for dinner and hit the local supermarket. As the sun goes down we prepare a simple dinner of corn and spinach. We are both too tired to hassle with a big production.

After dinner we take a walk to the beach except when we get to the end of the path through the reeds there is a 6 foot drop. So we enjoy the sounds and sight of the ocean from our perch above the beach. Maybe tomorrow we will find where the access to the beach is.

 

We are here for three nights and it is nice not to be unpacking and packing. We do not have a big agenda of things to do. There’s time for a little activity but even more time for reading, doing puzzles, writing blogs, cooking dinners, and looking out the window at the ocean. I like the slower pace for a change.

This morning it is sunny again and we decide to go use the tennis courts we found next to the high school. As usual the tennis courts are in disrepair. There are cracks in the surface and the nets hang loosely moving in the breeze.

Did I say breeze? I mean wind, gale, category 3 hurricane force wind to someone who is trying to play tennis. It is blowing from behind me because there is no way I could hit through it to get the ball over the net. The wind even takes my racket and wiggles it around in my hand when I go to hit. Even harder though is trying to figure out what John’s shots are going to do. They are much shorter than they should be since the wind is pushing them back. Between the wind and the uneven surface we give up after about a half an hour.

Next we decide to go to the beach and see if we can find our house up on the bluff. Needless to say if it was windy on the tennis court, it is amazingly so on the beach. We walk a bit on the sand but the wide beach is intersected by small rivers of fast moving water which keeps us from going far. The first beach we go to is the Whiskey Run Beach. It is a little south of where the house is.

We decide to try another beach just north of the house to see if we can find it. Since access to the beach is at longish intervals due to the bluffs, the next picture is the best I can do. The house is somewhere up on the bluff.

The wind is pretty enervating so after a stop at the store we decide spend the rest of the afternoon quietly.

We really love making our own food while on vacation. It is fun to see what you can invent with a limited supply of items. As usual we have brought a few of our knives, a spreader, peeler, and cutting board with us.  You never know what you are going to find in a rental.

John and I use the cast iron pan again to cook a dinner of Asian beef and broccoli with rice.

Dinner is a success! We watch some ocean and some TV and call it a night.

Upon arising I look out the window and, what is that I see?  It’s a bright orb. Why, it must be the sun! I imagined that there would be only chilly gloom the whole time we are here. But the day is sparkling so I grab my phone for a few pictures before the sun hides away again.

Following are some pictures of the exterior of the house, Shore Pines,that we are staying in. It is on a bluff overlooking the ocean and although you can see the beach and the ocean you have to go by car to one of the nearby beach access points to actually get on the beach.That’s really not much of a drawback since the temperatures of the air and the water are cool to cold and the wind howls off the Pacific pretty much 24/7.

The house has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a kitchen/great room. It is very well equipped and except for the uncomfortable queen bed and odd, not-cotton sheets is ideal. It is very isolated with no near neighbors at all.

Today we head out to Myrtle Point to the Coos County Fair about a half an hour away. As we pull into the parking lot we are directed to our space by people on horseback. This is a really rural county full of ranchers and farmers.

We are mostly interested in the animals. A couple of years ago when we were up here we also came to the fair and learned a lot about llamas at their judging. We are hoping to see some more animal competitions while we are here this time. We start out by taking a look at the goats in their enclosures.

Coos County has an active 4-H program and there are a lot of kids competing. We are a little surprised by the non-sentimentality of the people and their animals. The competitions are named by the end result, such as beef showmanship, pork best in show. We spend some time watching young 4-H-ers compete in the beef showmanship. These kids look to be 10 and under and sometimes they are more controlled by the “beef” than the other way around. But everyone is trying hard and gets a ribbon.

Next we wander over to a display of long horned cattle. Wow, do they have big horns but seem very docile. The little boy hangs his hat on one of the horns and the cow pretty much ignores him. Then the man cracks a whip right next to the cow’s face and it doesn’t flinch at all. Apparently that is an important trait of these cattle. These enormous cows are making a comeback in Texas where they were almost wiped out at the turn of the century from blizzards.

Then it is on to the llamas, John’s favorite animals. Along with Ponch, Llama was John’s nickname at his fraternity at MIT. He has a long upper lip hence the name.

It is around 2 PM when we get back into Bandon and time for some lunch. We walk around for a bit and check out a couple of fish markets. Maybe we will make some sort of fish for dinner tomorrow. During our walk around downtown Bandon the wind is so strong that I have to hold on to my hat the whole time or it would be swept off my head.

Although some intrepid souls are eating outside, we opt for the warmer, less windy Wheelhouse restaurant. John orders oyster stew which he raves about. I have a rockfish sandwich. The fish is very good and the coleslaw is really tasty too.

After lunch we head back to the house for a little nap time. For dinner John makes an excellent steak in the cast iron frying pan we found in one of the cupboards. I make a salad. We figure out how to use the TV here and watch a couple of programs on Netflix. Tonight we decide that two of us in a queen size bed doesn’t work out well so we opt for separate bedrooms. Tonight the sleeping should be better!

 

This morning is chilly and foggy. Our plan is to head up CA 101 along the coast with a stop at the Prarie Creek Visitor Center for some information about the Redwood National Park and then another stop at a commercial site called “The Trees of Mystery.” We have no idea if this will be some awful tree-themed park or something better.

Luckily the fog lifts as we approach the Visitor’s Center. The Redwoods National Park is a conglomeration of national and state parks conserving and highlighting the world’s tallest trees. Redwoods grow from small seeds into organisms that can weigh 500 tons and be taller than the Statue of Liberty.  They have foot thick bark that makes them all but impervious to fire and insects. After procuring some brochures we head out along the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway where the majesty of the tall trees can be appreciated.

From the sublime to the somewhat more ridiculous, we stop next at the touristy “Trees of Mystery.” We are greeted by an enormous waving statue of Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox. Paul Bunyan is a folk (or fake) lore figure and part of the Trees of Mystery is devoted to his story.

We join the line to get tickets and soon we are on our way hiking the main trail with its various named redwoods. I take a short break at the bear settee.

There are many beautiful views as we walk up the trail. Here’s one of the sunlight streaming through the trees.

We stop for a photo op at the Brotherhood Tree, the tallest one in the park. It has a nice sentiment on the sign.

The next portion of our adventure is a gondola ride up to the treetops. We meet a nice family from Washington State who are making the opposite journey from ours. They ask us what to see along the California coast.

From our vantage point high above the trees we can see the marine layer rolling back in.

The Trail of Tall Tales is next and is devoted to the lore of Paul Bunyan.  There are many of his adventures carved into redwood slabs with a chain saw. This is less interesting although I enjoy taking a picture of J.P. Stumpy with my own J.P.

At the end of the trails we are ushered into the gift shop after passing a cross section of a thousand year old tree. The earliest rings are from the time of the Crusades, 1096 A.D.

We need to be at our rental house around 4 PM so it is time to hustle up the coast after a quick bite for lunch in Crescent City. I rented this house on VRBO and it is supposed to be right on the ocean surrounded by solitude. I am hoping that it lives up to the hype (and price.) We follow the directions and head down a dirt road and around a bend and there it is. The house and the ocean! It is a pretty spectacular setting. Yay!

 

Today we start our long-awaited trip up the West Coast. Our first stop will be in Eureka, CA and then we will stay for a few days in Oregon, and Washington before ending in Vancouver, BC. It is really hot in our part of California with temperatures over 100F. We are seeking some cooler weather and a change of place and pace.

Part of our trip takes us through the beautiful redwood forest in California. In the picture below you can see a fabulous giant redwood tree in back of the Big Foot Schlock Shop. (For family members, “Souvenir shop ahead, watch for schlock!) One wonders what the zoning laws used to be.

We skip lunch and get to Eureka around 3 PM. As we approach we can see the remnants of the marine layer and watch the temperature, which has been as high as 102F on the trip, dip down to 64F. What a welcome relief!

We have an early dinner (so embarrassing to be like old folks) to make up for our missed lunch. We find the Sea Grill in downtown Eureka and decide to try out the local seafood. The oysters and clams are good but the potato and vegetables are a miss. However, the friendly competent service makes the dinner a success.

After dinner we drive over to Samoa Island, the barrier island for Humboldt Bay. It is really not developed at all except for some ugly heavy industry like electric generation and wood pulp manufacturing. There is a picturesque Coast Guard station, a breakfront, and old gun emplacements left over from WWII.