One seven-hour drive later, and I’m home. Well, staying with my friend Loralee until I find a place to move into, but you know what I mean.
Across southern Washington, through more brown hills to the Tri-Cities, where I picked up I-82 to Yakima, where I turned west on U.S. 12, over White Pass to the little town of Morton, where I turned north on U.S. 7, which eventually turns into the Mountain Highway, which leads to Tacoma.
The sleek hills of southeastern Washington, and the Snake River.Hayfields in southeastern Washington.I *think* this adorable little courthouse is in Pomeroy, Washington, but I wouldn’t swear to it.Orchards near Yakima.Heading west from Yakima on U.S. 12 — I drove this road in the other direction on my second day on the road.
The west side of the mountains — can you tell from the weather? [wry g]15,500 miles in almost four months (it would have been four months exactly next Tuesday). Which I’d have thought have been farther, given that in 1999, I was only gone two and a half months, and racked up 14,000 miles before I rolled my car in California. But that’s what Merlin’s odometer says, and I believe it [g].
Part of me is glad to be here, I think. Part of me wishes I just could have kept going, but well…
Thanks to everyone who stuck with me through all this! It’s been fun writing the posts, and I’m looking forward to the next time I get to hit the road.
Looking up towards Sourdough Ridge, at Sunrise, Mt. Rainier National Park.
So. A week and a half ago, we were having temperatures in the 80s here in the Puget Sound lowlands. We’ve had a summer for the record books — the most 90 degree days in one year, the most 80 degree days in one year, the hottest June, July, and August on record… The weather forecasters were beginning to sound like a broken record (and far too chipper for their own good, given the circumstances).
Then, a week ago today, the switch flipped. The temperatures dropped to the 60s, the wind picked up, and — you guessed it — we had the biggest August windstorm on record. All of a sudden it was October (the main harbinger of autumn here is wind — google Inauguration Day storm, Columbus Day storm, and Hanukkah Eve storm if you don’t believe me).
I’ve already got a second quilt on the bed, too, because the nighttime temps have started dropping to the 40s.
And then, to celebrate completing my new novel Reunion (the second Tale of the Unearthly Northwest), my friend L and I drove up to Sunrise today, on the eastern side of Mt. Rainier, and were greeted with this beautiful sight:
Low 40s, with snow-covered picnic tables. Suffice to say, we ate our lunch in the car.The trail was a bit icy and slushy, but the walk was wonderful. The air smells absolutely amazing up there.Not all was black and white and gray. Mountain ash foliage in full autumn color.Looks like some kids were having a good time!There really is a mountain up there. Looks like the bottom of the cloud deck was at about 12000 feet.
Oh, and the 6000 steps? Sunrise is at 6300 feet. We hit snow at about 6200 feet (Sunrise Point, about a mile from Sunrise proper, is at 6100 feet, and there was no snow there).
The last of the Rocky Mountains, along the Trans-Canada Highway.
Two weeks ago, June 21 and 22, 2015.
So, yesterday was the Fourth, which means I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the computer. Plus my monitor died Friday night. Fortunately, Best Buy was open on the holiday.
The penultimate day of my trip was the summer solstice. I also crossed back into the Pacific Time Zone, so it was quite a long day. I woke up at the crack of dawn again, into a gray-gloomy rainy day (which sounds so lovely right now — the temperature outside right now is over 90F, and has been for the last five days).
I’d had a reservation at a hostel in Kelowna, 215 miles down the road from Golden, but I’d decided to cancel it the previous night, because, well, now that I was on my way home, I wanted to see how far I could get. I always get sort of antsy the last day or two on the road on a trip like this — ready to get home.
I headed west again on the Trans-Canada Highway, through two more smaller national parks, Glacier National Park (yes, Canada has a national park called Glacier, too), and Mt. Revelstoke National Park, but there really wasn’t much reason to stop. The section through Glacier, over Rogers Pass, was the last section of the Trans-Canada Highway to be completed, in 1962. That road is younger than I am! There’s a historical site at what I’d call a rest area here in the States at the top of the pass, and I stopped to take a few pictures.
Approaching Rogers Pass, in Glacier National Park.Trans-Canada Highway monument, Rogers Pass.Looking east from the Rogers Pass Monument.
From there on it was down, down, down. I stopped in the town of Revelstoke, at a combo Tim Hortons and gas station, for liquid refreshment for both me and Kestrel, then turned south off of the Trans-Canada at the small town of Sicamous, onto Highway 97, which stays the same number in both Canada and the U.S.
Chicory flowers, near Sicamous, BC.
I drove past a pretty lake, and saw some blue wildflowers that had to be inspected and photographed, then south to the big city of Kelowna, where I arrived just in time for lunch (and was really glad I’d cancelled my hostel reservation). By that point, I’d left the lush forests of the western side of the Rockies behind, not to mention the rain and the cool temperatures. It was almost 30C, according to a bank thermometer in Kelowna, which translates to the lower 80sF, and not a cloud in the sky. It only got hotter the further I went, too.
The map had been somewhat misleading. I’d assumed that the double line that was Hwy. 97 through Kelowna meant that I’d be on a freeway, but no, just a four-lane boulevard with stoplights every hundred yards or so. It took me a while to fight my way through the traffic and reach the bridge across long, narrow Lake Okanagan. Then, after I was out of town, it turned into a freeway. Oh, well.
A glimpse of Lake Okanagan, south of Kelowna, BC.
Lake Okanagan is lovely, and the road clings to the cliff as it threads its way down past vineyards and through small towns and the good-sized city of Penticton. After Penticton, orchards were the order of the day, and I could have stopped and bought cherries any number of times. Alas, I was down to my last couple of Canadian dollars and didn’t want to get more at this stage, plus, I wasn’t sure if U.S. customs would let me through with them. So I didn’t.
Lake Osoyoos, BC.
I reached the U.S. customs station, just north of the little town of Oroville, Washington, along the shores of Lake Osoyoos (oh-SOY-oos — I asked the customs agent), about the middle of the afternoon. A very nice Hispanic lady checked my passport, asked me to take my sunglasses off for a moment so she could get a better look at my face, and to pop my trunk. If I’d known she was going to want to look in there, I’d have put all my dirty clothes back in my suitcase, but the only comment she made was how she, too, liked the brand of chips I had in my food bag. Oh, well, worse things have happened.
And then I was back in the land of miles and Fahrenheit (a rather high degree of Fahrenheit at that, almost 90 degrees, alas). I drove past Tonasket, which was the knot of the lasso of this trip, on to Omak, another hour or so, and got there around four. Found the motel I stayed at on my research jaunts for Sojourn, and crashed and burned. I’d been on the road since about 6 am Pacific time, and I slept like I was really working at it.
And the next day I got up and drove the five hours home, over familiar roads, down 97 past Wenatchee to Blewett Pass, to I-90 and home. I think I made three stops, one for gas and real MickeyD’s iced tea in Brewster, one just north of Wenatchee for cherries, and one just before I got back on I-90 to gather one last picnic from my cooler and food bag for lunch that I ate as I drove over Snoqualmie Pass. I got home about 2 in the afternoon. The condo hadn’t burned down and the cats were fine (although extremely eager to go outside, and beyond annoyed with me).
And that was my trip to the Canadian Rockies. Decidedly one of the best trips I’ve made in recent memory.
Wild rose at the logging historical exhibit west of Sherman Pass.
Twelve days ago, Friday, June 12, 2015
I think it was about three months ago when it was pointed out to me that I’m no farther from the Canadian Rockies than I am from
Yellowstone (about a hundred miles closer, in fact) and I thought, you know, I’ve been to Yellowstone how many times in the 22 years since I moved to western Washington — why have the only trips I’ve made to Canada in that time been a couple of weekends via ferry to Victoria?
So I renewed my passport and started making plans for the trip as soon as the exhibit was finished. That this happened to coincide with the dates the U.S. Open golf tournament was held less than
fifteen miles from my house was just a bonus (I am told the traffic that week was pretty overwhelming).
Anyway. As is normal on any first day of a vacation like this, I spent most of it on the road. Northeast on SR 18, where I began my day with a hawk stooping at prey right beside the road as I drove by, then east on I-90, of course, to the town of Cle Elum, just over Snoqualmie Pass, where I picked up a back road for a few miles to U.S. 97, which stretches north to the Canadian border, and,
incidentally, allowed me to bypass driving up I-5 through the entire
Puget Sound conurbation, plus avoid one of the busiest border crossings between here and Detroit.
I did not, however, go straight up U.S. 97 to the border. I turned east at the little town of Tonasket, in the heart of the Okanogan country, to explore the northeastern part of Washington before I headed on. I’d always been curious about this area, but it was just a bit farther than I’d want to go for an overnight.
I don’t know if anyone familiar with eastern Washington who’s reading this is as surprised as I was to discover how mountainous the northeast corner of the state actually is. I mean, south of here it’s pretty much flat and seriously monotonous all the way from
Ellensburg to Spokane. But SR 20 climbs quickly up from the
Okanogan River valley and enters national forest land. I passed through the “town” (if there were half a dozen buildings, I’d be shocked) of Wauconda, crossed a 4500 foot pass, dropped down to the San Poil River valley at the town of Republic (which could be the twin of Libby, Montana, where I lived briefly a long time ago), then climbed steeply to Sherman Pass, elevation 5500 feet.
The Sherman Pass viewpoint looks out over one of those curvature-of-the-earth views, over mountains that had obviously been burned in the not-too-distant past. An exhibit board said that the fire had taken place in 1988, the same year as the Yellowstone fires, and the landscape looked similar to the park.
View of burned mountains from the top of Sherman Pass.
East of Sherman Pass were a couple of historic landmarks. The first one was the site of a CCC camp in the 1930s, with some fun
sculpture:
Metal boot sculpture at the CCC historical marker.Metal sculpture of a CCC worker at the CCC historical marker.
The second one was apparently about logging, but with no sign, it was kind of hard to tell. On the other hand, this is where I saw the first of many, many wild roses in bloom on this trip (photo at top).
I crossed the Columbia River, actually Lake Roosevelt above the Grand Coulee Dam, at the town of Kettle Falls, the namesake of which is now buried under the reservoir.
The Columbia River, from a viewpoint just west of Kettle Falls.
But it had an interesting little historical museum where I took a break from the road.
The Kettle Falls Historical Society Museum.
And then I drove the last few miles to the county seat of Colville (pronounced CALL-ville, not COAL-ville), where I spent my first night on the road!
This time closer to home. It is that time of year again, after all.
These are all from along the Nathan Chapman trail in Puyallup, Washington, except for the first one, which is from the rainforest trail at the Carbon River entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park.
Skunk cabbage. Because a local spring wildflower photo essay is not complete without skunk cabbage.Serviceberry blossoms.Wild strawberry.
Western bleeding hearts. They’re all over the place this time of year.Siberian miner’s lettuce, or candy flower, depending on your preferences. Both common names for the same plant.
The next two photos are really blurry, but I’m including them for the sake of completeness. My apologies.
Harry the pig, who resides in the hamlet of Molson, Washington.
The knee could have been worse, I suppose. I won’t be doing any hiking today, at any rate.
But I head north to one of my favorite places in the Okanogan Highlands, the little half ghost town, half hamlet of Molson, which has the name of a Canadian beer because when the town was first founded, its settlers thought they were north of the 49th parallel (as it turns out, they were a couple of miles south of it, but oh, well).
It’s kind of a drive up there, another hour or so along the Okanogan River, past the little village of Riverside and through the slightly larger town of Tonasket, up to Oroville, along the southern shore of long, narrow Lake Osoyoos, which is cut in half by the U.S./Canadian border. There’s a huge grocery store just south of the customs building, with a parking lot always full of cars with British Columbia license plates. I guess groceries are cheaper in the U.S.?
At Oroville I turn east on a little two-lane called Chesaw Road (you know you’ve made the correct turn when you see the sign saying this way to the Sitzmark Ski Area, a little rope tow out in the middle of nowhere about forty miles out of Oroville), and head up through a narrow canyon, gaining quite a bit of altitude in the process before I come out on top of an undulating plateau. These are the true Okanogan Highlands, and are mostly ranchland where they’re not part of the national forest. About twelve miles east of Oroville is the lefthand turn on Molson Rd.
This is beautiful countryside, in so many ways. If you love rolling hills, larches and pines, golden brown grass, and wide open spaces, or you have a thing for wondering who lived in the occasional old, abandoned building out in the middle of the meadow, or even if — in spite of being absolutely in love with the thick Douglas fir forests on the west side of the mountains — you’re simply enthralled with the enormity of the bright blue sky, then the Okanogan Highlands are a balm.
One of the abandoned buildings scattered about the Okanogan. This one is on the road to Molson.
And the little town of Molson is well worth the drive. In the first place, it’s the home of the Molson School Museum I mentioned a couple of posts ago.
In the second, the citizens of Molson have preserved about an acre’s worth of historic buildings, which are open all the time so you can go in and explore.
Part of the ghost town of Old Molson.Inside one of the ghost town buildings of Old Molson.
And in the third place, they have Harry the pig.
I love Harry. I wanted his backstory so badly I invented one for him. And then wrote a novel around it.
Now, I don’t know if the plaster pig in the abandoned store window in ‘downtown’ Molson actually has a name — I never asked. But in my novel Sojournhe’s Harry, and he’s very important to my fictional Conconully. As a matter of fact, the town might not even exist without him. So I love him. He’s just such a whimsy for a place like that.
After a couple of hours exploring and a pleasant picnic lunch, and a gravel lane that eventually leads me back to Tonasket, I reluctantly head south again. I need to be home by tonight, and it’s a good five-hour drive if I take the bit of a detour into the Methow Valley that I have planned.
My goat trail for the trip. Actually, it was a very nice, well-maintained gravel road.
At the town of Okanogan I turn west, and less than half an hour later I realize that I ought to have checked the road conditions first. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my last post, this past summer Washington state experienced its largest wildfire ever, which covered over 250,000 acres in the north central part of the state. The Carlton Complex fire caused damage that the area will still be recovering from years from now, and part of that damage was to U.S. Highway 20 between Okanogan and the Methow (pronounced Met-how, pronouncing the T and the H separately) Valley. The traffic was down to an alternating one lane for over a mile, and I lost a good half an hour by the time I reached the valley.
That was just my first check. The second was that State highway 153, which runs south down the valley towards Wenatchee, was also closed due to fire damage. Fortunately, a backroad runs parallel to it and a detour was set up. But I lost another hour by the time I got to Wenatchee.
Still, it was worth it, although I don’t think I’d have made the detour had I known. U.S. 20 climbs up over a magnificent pass and descends into the scenic Methow Valley, and the backroad down the valley was spectacular, crossing and recrossing the Methow River in the shadow of glorious mountains. And I found a non-crowded fruit stand just north of Wenatchee and loaded up on apples and pears.
I didn’t get home till well after dark that Sunday evening. I was tired and my knee was sore. But it was all so worth it. I highly recommend a weekend in the Okanogan country.
Back for a few decades on either side of the turn of the last century, a flotilla of little ships used to travel Puget Sound, carrying passengers and freight, stopping at every settlement along the hundreds of miles of waterfront along Puget Sound. This was, of course, back when water was the easiest and fastest mode of transport in the region, before roads were built and the cars to run on them became ubiquitous. These little ships were so ubiquitous themselves that some wag dubbed them the Mosquito Fleet. And the name stuck.
Almost all of them are gone now, but Kitsap County Transit still operates one of the little ships as part of the foot ferry service between Port Orchard and Bremerton, Washington, along with two larger and slightly newer foot (as opposed to automobile) ferries. Unfortunately, the Mosquito Fleet boat, which purportedly has an onboard exhibit about the fleet, was down for service the day I took my trip, but I did get to ride one of the other boats, which mostly carries people who live in Port Orchard, but work in the Puget Sound Navy Shipyard, among other places, in Bremerton, back and forth on what has to be one of the more unusual commutes around.
One of the two Port Orchard – Bremerton foot ferry boats operating the day of my trip.The foot ferry boat I rode on, the Admiral Pete.The inside of the Admiral Pete.Looking towards the pilothouse of the Admiral Pete.Looking towards Bremerton from the Port Orchard dock.Looking back towards Port Orchard.The Admiral Pete’s wake. It’s a catamaran.The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard from the ferry.
Once I arrived in Bremerton, I headed for the Kitsap County Historical Museum, which I’d heard had an exhibit on the Mosquito Fleet. Which it did, including an interesting historical map, and profiles of some of the boats.
Part of the Mosquito Fleet exhibit at the Kitsap County Historical Museum.A map of Mosquito Fleet routes at the Kitsap County Historical Museum. That big gray thing on the right that looks sort of like Pac-Man is Seattle, and the smaller square below it is Tacoma.
The museum also had very good exhibits on the history of the Kitsap Peninsula (the west side of the Sound), and some fun stuff about life in the early days on “stump farms” (the kind of farm you have when you try to grow crops on logged-over land).
The Bremerton pier attracted my interest next. It’s designed for strolling, and the views were lovely. This statue was nifty, too.
A sculpture on the Bremerton pier.
Once I was back on the other side of the ferry terminal, I took a gander at the Puget Sound Navy Museum, full of the history of the Puget Sound Navy Shipyard next door. It also housed several mockups of various parts of the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier. I think the part that impressed me the most was how cramped the bunks were, barely 18 inches vertically between mattress top and the bottom of the bunk above. If I didn’t already have claustrophobia, I’m afraid trying to sleep in a bunk on the Stennis would have given it to me.
My last stop of the day was at Fountain Park, located between the shipyard and the ferry terminal, which doesn’t sound like much of a location until you realize just how far out over the water you can see. All the way to the southern end of the Olympics.
And the fountain? Is just the coolest thing I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s actually half a dozen fountains, each designed to look like a submarine coming up out of the water. The fountains shoot water out of the tops randomly. The only warning you get is water starting to pour down the sides, more and more, and then all of a sudden water just shoots out of the top, about, oh, I don’t know, twenty feet high or more. And they go off one after another after another, in a completely random order. It was all I could do to drag myself back to the ferry terminal, even though I was looking forward to the ride back.
The fountains at Fountain Park.One of the fountains erupts (like a geyser!). The large boat to the left in the back is the ferry that goes from Bremerton to Seattle.Another erupting fountain.
Anyway, if you ever get to go to the Kitsap Peninsula on Puget Sound, I highly recommend the foot ferry from Port Orchard to Bremerton. And go watch the fountains for me!
Which makes sense. Last Sunday, I decided to go out to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge — the main link doesn’t seem to be working for some reason, but this one should — which occupies most of the estuary of the Nisqually River (the one I showed you the glacial headwaters of last week ). It’s the largest remaining undeveloped estuary on Puget Sound, and the site of a heated battle between developers and preservationists back in the 1970s, which resulted in the creation of the refuge.
The refuge used to be mostly diked farmland, and a few years ago, the management decided it would be better for the critters if the dikes were removed, so they were, and a beautiful two-plus mile boardwalk replaced the dike trails. The boardwalk leads to a gazebo at the very edge of the estuary, where you can see open water and most of the southern end of the sound.
For some reason, on this trip I didn’t see any critters on the way out to the gazebo except for gulls, but I saw lots on the way back. I’m not sure why that was.
The trail to the head of the boardwalk is mostly a boardwalk, too, and traverses forest of bigleaf maple and black alder. In spite of the trees, it’s mostly wetland, and this time of year the water is covered with bright green algae. Jewelweed blooms this time of year, too.
The boardwalk leading to the estuary boardwalk.Bright green algae covering the wetland.Jewelweed blossoms.
Then the forest stops and the estuary starts, and the sky opens up.
Out of the forest and onto the tideflats.You can see the gazebo at the end of the boardwalk, just to the left of the end of the bluff (not the dock and building, to the left of that). The white spots are gulls.Looking back towards the twin barns (there really are two, although you can only see one of them in this photo) at the beginning of the estuary boardwalk. The parking lot’s about half a mile past that.
I walked all the way out to the gazebo, which, like I said, is over two miles one way. The clouds kept coming and going. I kept wishing they’d stay, because it was warm, and out on the tideflats like that it was humid. Under the clouds it was fine. Under the sun, it was sweaty.
On a clear day, you can see all the way up to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge from the gazebo, a distance of somewhere between 15-18 miles as the gull flies.
If you look very closely, you can see one of the uprights on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, dead center.
And then, on the way back, I saw Critters. With a capital Cr.
An egret. Isn’t he gorgeous? What I really want to know is how he stays so white out there in the mud.A great blue heron. I saw about half a dozen of these coming back, but this one was the closest.Another heron, who really isn’t headless (see his reflection?).My birder friend says this is a hawk, probably a red-tailed hawk just because they’re so common here.And, as the enthralled little girl I was watching this fellow with said, “a bunny!”
I also saw a lot of swallows out swooping around eating mosquitoes, but they were moving far too fast to photograph.
All in all, a wonderful day out at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.
State trooper Daniel Reilly never thought he’d wind up in his stepmother’s favorite movie. Chasing a suspected drunk
driver through Washington's desolate Okanogan Highlands is part of his job, but crashing his cruiser and waking up in a ghost town sure isn’t. And when that ghost town starts to come to life?
His version of Brigadoon is not a carefree musical.
You can read the first chapter by clicking on the cover. Take a look at pictures of the real Okanogan Highlands here. And take a look at Sojourn‘s research pathfinder here.
Tell me what you think! I’d love to hear it.
Sojourn will be available for pre-order by the middle of September, and for purchase in October, 2014.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided that since I didn’t see quite as many wildflowers at Sunrise and Hurricane Ridge this year as I would have liked, I would make a trip up to Paradise, on the south side of Mt. Rainier.
Paradise was purportedly named by Virinda Longmire, one of the early settlers at the foot of the Mountain, who was said to exclaim what a paradise the flower-filled mountainside was. I have to say I agree with her.
A trip to Paradise in the summertime has to be carefully planned, because of how popular it is. You don’t want to go on a weekend, and you need to arrive fairly early, even on a weekday, because the parking fills up. There’s a yellow light on the side of the road at Longmire (about ten miles inside the park entrance) that blinks when the parking areas at Paradise are full, and a sign that says you won’t be able to stop there but must keep moving on through when the light is blinking.
The park service used to run shuttle busses to Paradise to help with the congestion, but they’re not running this summer due to budget cuts.
At any rate, I arrived at Paradise around 10:30 (it takes about 1½-2 hours to get there from my house), which was in time to snag a spot.
The trail I’d had in mind today was the Nisqually Vista Trail. It used to be one of the most popular trails in the park, but ever since they tore down the old flying saucer visitor center near its trailhead a few years ago and built the new one over closer to the Inn, people seem to have forgotten about it, which is wonderful from my point of view. In spite of the crowds everywhere else, I ran into maybe a dozen people on the entire two-mile loop.
And this is what I saw:
Mt. Rainier from the Nisqually Vista Trail, and wildflowers.Lupine and paintbrush and bistort and…I’ve only seen white lupine a few times. Usually it’s blue or purple.Lupine, etc., along the trail.Pink monkeyflowers, which like their feet wet, so you usually find them along streams.Like this one.A close up of scarlet paintbrush, although this one’s more coral-colored than scarlet. The colored parts are actually bracts surrounding the inconspicuous flowers.Mt. Rainier and the Nisqually Glacier, where the headwaters of the Nisqually River originate.A close-up of the snout of the Nisqually Glacier. Even at that distance, the sound of the river pouring from the glacier is very loud.Closeup of some heather blossoms.A patriotic view of red paintbrush, blue lupine, and white Sitka valerian.Pure blue gentians, which grow profusely along the driveway between the lower parking lot and the visitor center.
Lots and lots of wildflowers. A beautiful Mountain. And an excellent view of the Nisqually Glacier.
All in all, a terrific day at Paradise.
I also stopped in Longmire on my way back, which is the site of the first settlement in what is now the park, and hence the place where they emphasize the history of our fifth national park. I wanted to pick the brain of the ranger on duty at the museum there about some resources for my next novel, and to poke around.
One of the old busses that used to take people up to Paradise a long time ago, parked at Longmire.The Longmire Museum, one of the oldest museums in the national park system.
And that was my last summer visit to Mt. Rainier this year.
Well, sorta. This past weekend was the steam event at the Foss Waterway Seaport, in Tacoma, Washington, which sounded like a lot of fun.
Which it was. I knew before I arrived at the museum that they’d done a lot to it since the last time I’d been there, mumble-odd years ago, and they have. The museum is housed in what was once one of the largest wheat warehouses in the world.
An interior view of the wheat warehouse in Tacoma, back in the day when wheat from eastern Washington would arrive by train at the port, to be transferred to clipper ships taking it around the world. Photo linked to from the Foss Waterway Seaport Museum.
By the time the museum was conceived, the warehouse was falling to ruin, but it’s been extensively remodeled and is now quite the showplace, although you can tell it’s still a work in progress.
The inside of the Foss Waterway Seaport today.
When I bought my admission ticket Sunday afternoon, the woman handed me a sticker and said, “This will get you a boat ride, too.” I looked around, and asked, “where?” She laughed and told me to go back outside and down the gangway to the dock.
The Foss Waterway Seaport dock.
So I did. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, warm enough that the breeze off the water of the Thea Foss Waterway felt wonderful.
Three boats were running that afternoon, taking turns giving people a spin out on the water.
One of the two boats I didn’t ride in.The boat I rode in, The Vital Spark.
The name of the boat I rode in was The Vital Spark, and I got to sit right next to the little steam engine, which was cool. I’d never seen one running up close before (I did get to see a steam engine at the Golden Spike National Historic Site earlier this summer, but while I saw the engine, and I saw the locomotive moving down the track from a distance, I didn’t get to see the engine actually working).
The Vital Spark’s engine.
It looked and sounded just like the one in the African Queen, except much cleaner and in better shape. The captain even blew the whistles (there are three of them, in gradation from softest to loudest).
Looking out towards Commencement Bay, from the deck of The Vital Spark.
We went out to where the Thea Foss Waterway meets Commencement Bay, then turned around and came back.
The view back towards downtown Tacoma and the 11th Street/Murray Morgan Bridge. Murray Morgan was a local historian who wrote a terrific book about the history of Tacoma and environs, called Puget’s Sound.
And who is Thea Foss, you ask? Well, if you’re old enough, you may have heard of Tugboat Annie. Thea Foss is the real woman Tugboat Annie was — very loosely — based on. Mrs. Foss was a Scandinavian immigrant back in the 19th century who, with her husband, started Foss Maritime, which became the largest tugboat company on the U.S. west coast. The story goes that while Thea’s husband was away from home doing carpentry work, a disgruntled fisherman offered to sell her his boat, and when her husband came home, it turned out she’d made more money with the boat than he had with his carpentry. And so a business was born.
Part of the Foss exhibit in the museum.
The museum is well worth a visit if you visit Tacoma. And if you happen to be here on the last weekend in August, see if they’re offering steamboat rides, too!
I will post more photos of the hike I took at Sunrise a couple of weeks ago soon, but this is the one I’m posting on Senator Patty Murray’s site. In honor of the 98th birthday of the National Park Service, she’s holding a contest for photos taken in Washington’s national parks. I figure she’ll probably get dozens of pictures of the Mountain, so I’d be different.
I really had the best of intentions, but here, five days later, is the second and last day of my friend’s and my trip around the Olympic Peninsula in July.
Both of us woke very early that morning (I’m talking six a.m., which is the middle of the night for me normally), but fortunately, the little restaurant attached to the motel was open. It did breakfast about the same way it did supper — I asked the cook/waiter if I wanted a single pancake or a short stack, and he said I probably wanted a single pancake. I don’t know what this trend is for restaurants to serve pancakes the size of Mt. Rushmore, but the one I ate about half of definitely fell into this category.
We were on the road by seven. Lake Crescent is beautiful at that hour of the morning. Alas, I wasn’t awake enough to think to stop and take photos, but here’s one from a previous trip. Lake Crescent is actually quite gorgeous at any hour of the day.
Lake Crescent at sunset, on another trip.
Our main stop for the day was Hurricane Ridge, so after stopping to get gasoline, we took a right turn in the heart of Port Angeles and headed up into the mountains.
The road up to Hurricane Ridge is seventeen miles long, and gains 5242 feet in altitude, straight up from sea level, so you can imagine how winding and steep it is. There are a couple of tunnels, and lots of pull-outs to enjoy the view across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island, but you can’t really see the Olympic Mountains themselves until you’re almost to the top.
We stopped at a trailhead along the way that I always stop at. It’s usually a good place to see yellow monkeyflowers. This time there were no monkeyflowers, but there were several large clumps of larkspur, of a type I’d never seen before.
Tall larkspur at trailhead on Hurricane Ridge Rd.
From there we went on up to Hurricane Ridge itself, where we got out and walked the paved pathway up the hill to the viewpoint, where in one direction you can see back towards Vancouver Island again, and, if you turn halfway around, you can see the heart of the Olympic Mountains spread out before you.
The view north towards Vancouver Island. One of the weird things about this part of Washington is that most of the radio stations you can get reception on here are actually in Victoria, BC, Canada.The Olympic Mountains, from the trail at Hurricane Ridge.
I was a bit disappointed in the wildflowers this year. Most of them had already come and gone by the time of our visit, except in very protected, north-facing slopes.
The last of this year’s lupine in a sheltered spot at Hurricane Ridge.
But it certainly was deer season. We saw at least three or four, and after my friend called it a day (she was still sore from the walking we’d done the day before) and went to sit on the deck at the visitor center to enjoy the view, I strolled further around the paths and saw a doe with a fawn. So that was fun.
Deer at Hurricane Ridge.Doe and fawn (fawn still has spots) at Hurricane Ridge.The Olympic Mountains and the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center.
I also saw some other critters.
A butterfly along the trail.A raven prowling the bistort (the white fuzzy flowers) along the trail.
When it got to be lunchtime, we drove back down to Port Angeles and ate, and then set out on the three-hour journey back home.
And that was the second day of our trip around Olympic National Park!
It takes five hours to make the — relatively — straight shot from Spokane on home. If you don’t stop anywhere. I’ve driven this stretch so many times I’m pretty sure Kestrel and I could do it in our sleep.
It’s not like we’d be missing a whole lot, either, at least for the first three hours. It doesn’t take more than about a dozen miles headed west from Spokane before you’re out of the pine forest and into the high desert, alternating between irritated croplands and plains of sagebrush.
On the bright side, you do start getting glimpses of The Mountain (aka Mt. Rainier, aka how I know I’m really almost home) from as far away as Ritzville, about sixty miles southwest of Spokane, given decent weather conditions, which include clear weather on both sides of the Cascades.
I had decent conditions two weeks ago today, and here’s the photographic proof.
Mt. Rainier from just west of Ritzville, Washington, a distance of roughly 160 miles as the crow flies.
After I passed Ellensburg, and I-90 turned northwest again towards Snoqualmie Pass, I got this nice shot of what I think might be Mt. Baker as well, although I wouldn’t swear to it. The shape’s right, anyway.
What I think is Mt. Baker, from I-90 west of Ellensburg, Washington.
And that was the last photo I took on this trip. I climbed up over Snoqualmie Pass and got stuck in construction traffic (they’re redoing the interstate over the pass, which involves taking things down to one lane all the time and closing the highway altogether at night so they can blast rocks), but I still made it home by about 2:30.
My condo hadn’t burned down and the cats were still alive (and shot out the back door like furry little cannons when I opened it), and, while this trip was too short, it was good for my soul.
I was gone for ten days and drove roughly 2500 miles. My father would have approved
From Sheridan — well, actually from Twin Bridges, the next little town down the road — there were two ways to go. One north, which I hadn’t driven before but which led to I-90, which I’ve driven at least a couple dozen times, and one southwest towards I-15, that stretch of which I’d never driven before. Even though it was about twenty miles further, guess which way I took?
And I’m glad I did. The first bit was very pretty, through sparsely populated ranch land ringed with mountains and down into the town of Dillon on I-15. I’ve only been to Dillon once before. It was the first place on my Long Trip in which I couldn’t find a place to stay (due to it being Labor Day and the annual rodeo).
From Dillon I headed north on I-15, and, less than twenty miles down the road, I happened to glance over to the right and saw a bald eagle perched on one of the posts holding up the wire fence running alongside the road. Fully mature, white head and all, he had to be two feet tall, I swear. Too bad I was going 70 mph on a freeway — I’d have tried to take a picture of him. He was amazing.
Deer Lodge Pass over the Continental Divide south of Butte (where I-15 and I-90 cross) is much more gradual and less steep than Homestake Pass due west of Butte. But because of that I think I was climbing pretty much all the way from Dillon to the pass. At any rate, once I hit I-90 I was on familiar territory and pretty much ready to head home.
I stopped for iced tea in Deer Lodge (the town, not the pass, which is about forty-five minutes from Butte (the highway signs say west, but the road runs almost due north-south at that point). I stopped for lunch and more gas in Missoula.
And I crossed over Lookout Pass into Idaho and the Pacific Time Zone about the middle of the afternoon, aiming for Spokane.
I won’t bore you with the hunt I had to make for a motel room in Spokane. Suffice to say that I think I’ve found a new reasonably-priced convenient place to stay there on my way to wherever, which is a good thing as the one I was used to using had upped its price out of reason because of Hoopfest (I’m assuming) that weekend.
Only one photo today, taken along I-90 between Missoula and Lookout Pass, probably closer to Lookout Pass. I was trying to take a photo of the rain falling ahead of me, which actually turned out to be mostly virga (that is, not hitting the ground).
Stormy weather along I-90 in western Montana.
And that was the penultimate day of my trip, two weeks ago today.
Two weeks ago today I headed out for parts unknown. Well, at least some parts, and at least some of them were unknown to me. And I didn’t know I was going anywhere until four days before I left. Things happen that way sometimes, especially when my feet get itchy.
I have raced across Idaho on my way to Yellowstone a fair number of times in the last fifteen years, straight across the narrowest part just south of Canada on I-90, less than 80 miles between Washington state and Montana. So this time I decided to take the long way around, and explore Idaho, part of Wyoming, and even a little bit of Utah along the way.
But first I had to get across Washington. Normally that’s another I-90 buzz across to Spokane, a five hour drive to the Idaho state line, but I wanted to do things a little differently. This time I went south and east, skirting the eastern edge of Mt. Rainier National Park and heading over Chinook Pass on U.S. 410. The pass was clear and dry, but it’s obvious that it’s only been open a few weeks judging from the amount of snow still lying about on the mountainsides. I left that behind quickly, though, and, with one stop at a fruit stand for a bag full of Rainier (of course) cherries the size of small plums, I was through Yakima and on I-82 to I-84, across the Columbia River, and into Oregon.
Most of the interstate through eastern Washington is through the high desert where it isn’t being irritated, as my father used to say, by those huge sprinkler farms. But less than an hour after I crossed my first state line of the trip, I started climbing again, and when I reached a rest area in the pines at the summit, it was to find an exhibit about how this was the last pass the pioneers on the Oregon Trail had to surmount. It was about twenty degrees cooler than the 90s down in the valley and the view went on pretty much forever. I also saw my first wildflowers of the trip, gaillardia and cow parsnips.
Gaillardia at Emigrant Springs waysideBlue Mountains and Oregon high desert
My first planned stop of the trip was near the town of Baker City, Oregon, almost all the way to Idaho a couple of hours further on. A lady on my online quilting list had mentioned stopping at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, and, history buff that I am it sounded interesting.
The center is five miles off the interstate, back in the high desert of far northeastern Oregon, and way up on a hilltop overlooking the valley and the Blue Mountains and, not incidentally, the still-visible wagon tracks from the 1840s, which were quite amazing. The building itself looked new, and the exhibits, says the freelance curator, were top-notch.
Entrance to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Baker City, Oregon.One of the exhibits at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.Panel pointing out landmarks, including the wagon tracks, second from left, at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.
I know my western history fairly well, but I still learned things I didn’t know about the Oregon Trail. And I ran across an old friend, so to speak, when I saw a panel on Ezra Meeker, whose mansion is in Puyallup, where I did my internship. Ezra came out to Washington on the Oregon Trail in 1851, and spearheaded the campaign to save and preserve the trail back in 1906-08 by retracing his steps along it all the way to the other Washington, where he met with President Theodore Roosevelt about it.
It was getting on in the afternoon by the time I pried myself away from the center, and I only drove one more hour, to Ontario, Oregon, on the Idaho border, crossing over into the Mountain Time Zone in the process.
I hated the Midwest the entire six years I lived there — and, no, hated is not too strong a word — but now that I’ve been back in the Pacific Northwest for over twenty years, I can admit there are some things that I miss about the landscape there. Spring wildflowers carpeting the ground under the bare-limbed woods. The colors of fall (but not trees after the leaves fall, which then proceed to look dead for the ensuing six months). And the wide-open spaces. I even took a vacation to North Dakota summer before last, and reveled in a sky that looked like it took up more than 180 degrees horizon to horizon.
It’s not that I want to move anywhere else, you understand, but there are aspects of all the places I’ve lived that I wish I could have brought with me. Well, except for Louisiana, but we left there when I was three and it didn’t make much of an impression.
Southern California gave me a need for color all year round. My father used to prune the roses in our yard there back every January, not because they’d gone dormant, but because if he didn’t, the bushes would grow so tall that the flowers would bloom six feet over our heads, where we couldn’t appreciate them.
Colorado showed me what seasons are like. I still remember my mother waking me up before dawn the first day it snowed in our yard, so that I could see the flakes falling. And living so close to real mountains is very different from just visiting them from time to time.
Northern California isn’t at all like southern California. Not desert, but fertile farmland. I’d never been to a place where I could pick my own produce before. And while neither were in my backyard anymore, both the ocean and real mountains were only a day trip away.
The Willamette Valley of Oregon is so, so green and lush. More fertile farmland, but the mountains wrap around the valley like a hug. I was back in the land of seasons, too. They were called About to Rain, Rain, Showers, and Road Construction <wry g>.
And then somehow I left that glory and moved to the Midwest, first Indiana then Ohio, which turned out to be a colossal mistake.
When I finally escaped back West, I took a job in Montana. Not the wide-open spaces of eastern Montana, but to a small town in a claustrophobically steep-sided river valley in the far northwest corner of the state. Evergreens as far as the eye could see. I wasn’t there long enough to experience a winter, but I suspect claustrophobic wouldn’t have begun to describe it.
And then here, in western Washington, where I have volcanoes, an inland sea, an ocean two hours away, and, you’d think, just about anything a person could want. Except those wide-open spaces and early spring wildflowers.
Go figure.
So, do you have geography from places you’ve lived that you wish you could have brought with you to where you live now?
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