Northwest Trip 2011

I've been wanting to visit the Portland/Seattle/Vancouver corner of North America for quite some time, and I'm glad to say that I finally did so!


Day 1: Michael and I got ready to leave Fremont, excited that our National Park annual pass had arrived, but flustered to discover that my passport was nowhere to be found. Some quick online research inspired me to call my parents and ask them to express my birth certificate to a destination a couple of days down the road. We made it to Klamath Falls, Oregon, where we first experienced non-self-serve gas. Unfortunately, the nearby campground was closed. We pulled into a church parking lot and slept in the car.

Day 2: Crater Lake was only a short drive away and it dazzled us with its beauty. We continued on through beautiful country (while listening to the book on CD of Pratchett's Nation) to Mt. Hood, where most campsites were closed for the winter. We found one that wasn't monitored, but still open, and set up camp away from the two other campers. After I read about flooding that happened there many years ago and told Michael about it, he became scared that we will be swept away in a flood, which makes me laugh.


Crater Lake


Day 3: We drove through even more ooh and aah country, filled with trees and hills and lakes. On the way to a town in the middle of nowhere that I insisted upon visiting, we had a lady at a gas station say "oh cute" to us and we got pulled over (the officer was nice enough to tell us just to slow down). We arrived at Leavensworth, Washington, a town built to resemble southern Germany. We enjoyed some rouladen, Jägerschnitzel, and spätzle--which hilariously wasn't pronounced correctly by the dirndle-wearing waitress. We also visited a bakery, a chocolate store, and an enormous Christmas store--which hilariously only had one single Schwippbogen in the entire place. We continued on to Seattle, where we spotted a zillion lawnmowers in the area called Fremont. Unfortunately, everything was closed when we arrived, but we saw the outside of most of my listed desinations, including the Space Needle, the shiny and colorful Experience Music Project Gehry building, the sculpture garden, and Pike Place Market. We picked up something resembling Döners, remarked at every lonely yuppie we saw walking through the city with a small dog, and took off for my friend Crystal's grandma's house, an hour and a half north. After almost hitting a small white dog in the street and pausing to have a discussion, we chatted for ages with Crystal's grandma and aunt, only to find out that the white dog was theirs.


Leavensworth, WA


Gehry EMP Building, Seattle


Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle


Day 4: The day started with rain and us making crepes for our three hosts. After breakfast, I helped Crystal's grandma use her new iMac to print photos of Crystal. We got a tour of the property, which has been cleverly and frugally built up out of garage sale finds. After spending a frustrating amount of time talking on the phone and using a nearby library's wifi to take care of mostly non-vacation items (where a man who was leaving started singing "One Enchanted Evening" to us as he passed by), we successfully crossed the border into Canada even though the officer who questioned us seemed confused at the fact that we would be staying with someone we'd never met. Once again, we arrived too late to see most destinations on our list, but nevertheless visited the grounds of a garden, the art museum (which was flooded with Occupationists), the library, an Inuit art gallery, and several hip neighborhoods. After splitting a bento box, we visited the divine-pizza-smelling-Granville Island neighborhood, gawked at lovely houses on our way to a beach that looked across the water to downtown Vancouver, and drove up to Grouse Mountain. I saw people looking at something moving behind some trees and approach, fascinated, to discover amazingly large wolves separated from us by a fence. Finally, we continued on to meet our generous hostess and her fiance. We marveled at the IKEA-inspired apartment and laughed about the eternity it took to blow up my mattress when I put the pump into the wrong hole.


Bellingham, WA


Occupation in Vancouver, BC, Canada


Vancouver at night


Wolves on Grouse Mountain


IKEA in real life


Day 5: We attended the church on the Vancouver templegrounds, and, since we had nowhere better to heat up some ramen on a small borrowed camping propane tank, set up lunch at the picnic tables to the side of the temple parking lot. Although we had planned to continue on to Victoria, we followed the suggestion of a ward member to visit the Golden Ears Park. We found a campsite among huge, old-growth trees, and made our way down to a thin beach accompanying a gorgeous landscape: pristine Alouette Lake accented by tree-covered mountains and clear skies. As it got darker, I purposely left off the flashlight so that we could enjoy the stars as I learned to count from 0-10 in Mandarin. The only thing that reminded us that we weren't far from Vancouver was the planes that flew overhead now and then.


Lunch after church at the Vancouver Temple


Golden Ears Provincial Park


Believe it or not, there wasn't much light for this photo--oh the joys of long exposure shots!


Day 6: After hiking out onto a sandstrip in Alouette Lake, we drove back to civilization to catch up on some emails, then took the ferry to Victoria. As seemed to be the pattern, upon arriving in Victoria, we found all of our touristy destinations closed. When we discovered that the ferry to Washington only leaves twice a day, we decided to stay to go whale-watching the next day and enjoyed dinner at a fabulous pizza place. Our campsite was one of the nicest we'd been to, with isolated campsites and a very clean, heated bathroom.


Alouette Lake, Canada


Alouette Lake, Canada


Day 7: In the morning, a campground ranger came by to pick up our money and as we drove away, we guiltily read scriptures about being servants to the devil--we'd sealed the envelope with American dollars in it, having never withdrawn Canadian currency. The gardens Michael jubilantly drove over hilly, curved roads to were way more expensive than they were worth, so we turned around and headed to downtown Victoria. Though the whale-watching companies claim they'll put together tours as needed, the low amount of tourists in October made them limit their first tour to noon, which would make us get back too late to get on the ferry. The museum also seemed more expensive than it was worth, so we walked to artist and author Emily Carr's house (which we could only look at from the outside), visited the Undersea Gardens where we saw a scuba diver hold up crabs and fish and an octopus, and then went to check out the famous "tea time" at a grand-looking hotel that dominates the harbor. When told that tea was 48 Canadian dollars per person, we opted out and instead ate at a posh seafood restaurant. The ferry officer informed us that our box of Costco oranges would have to go and so Michael kindly donated them to the local guys at the check-in booth. Washington greeted us with a confusion of one-way streets and even a glimpse of a store dedicated completely to Twilight paraphernalia (no, we didn't stop). While Michael drove, I revised our trip, cutting out several small cities and searching for a still-open campsite near Mt. Rainier though Michael's service kept cutting out. Finally, I called an RV place and asked if we could set up our tent there. We arrived at what looked like a white-trash dead end, where Michael informed me that we couldn't get out of the car because there was "a dog out there." "Where?" I asked incredulously, after looking around. "Right there!" he said, his head pulled back and hesitant. "Can't you see the ears?" Finally, I looked down from his driver's side window and saw a friendly mutt panting at us. "He's a nice doggy," I said, and opened my own door, offering a gently-closed fist while whistling. "See?" I asked, as he silently but excitedly sniffed at my hand. After telling us that the dog's name was Bentley, the lady in the white trailer who had answered my phone call took our ten dollars and showed us where we could set up our tent. I wanted to be away from the road and in the dark, but Michael wanted to be by the streetlight. We compromised by putting the tent behind the car--lucky, because I felt very sick in the middle of the night and ended up sleeping in the car with one hand on the door handle. (I also accidentally set off the car alarm at 3 in the morning, oops.)


Victoria, Canada


Day 8: In the morning, we were pleasantly surprised to find that we could see the entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park from our tent. Though the air was freezing, even with fleece pants over my jeans and three jackets/coats on, the mountain was absolutely beautiful, so I made oatmeal while Michael took pictures. A ranger pointed out a rare fox to us. Our next destination, Mt. St. Helens, was reached by way of small logging towns. We were glad we skipped the visitor's center to the volcano, which is miles and miles from the volcano. Johnston Ridge, on the other hand, boasts an observatory with personal accounts of the day of the blast, models, a documentary, and a view straight up the collapsed side, where lava domes are still forming today. Once again, we put aside our embarrassment and made ramen in a parking lot. Then we headed to Astoria, Oregon, to see a column overlooking the bay. For the first time since starting the trip, we were shocked to not be able to find a Starbucks, since they'd been the source of our internet connection and bathrooms at every stop. I suggested we stop at a Mormon church, and sure enough, a Halloween party was going on. While Michael had his appointment with Mother Nature, I complimented costumes while avoiding conversation with adults and ate a cupcake decorated to be like a ghost. Then we stealthily slipped away to have clam chowder and a sandwich at a restaurant in Seaside. Once again, finding a campsite was difficult. Our original goal had a sign up that said, "No tents." The next place I called said they were closing in three minutes, and when I told them our location, they said it'd take us fifteen minutes and didn't offer to wait. We found a KOA about twenty minutes away. As I hurriedly set up the tent, Michael repeatedly shone his light into the trees behind our site. "There are eyes over there!" he said, scared. "What? Eyes?" I glanced over to where his flashlight shone and saw nothing. "Look!" he repeated. Finally, the third time, I saw what he meant. "They're getting closer!" he insisted as I shook my head. Suddenly, an animal lumbered out of the bushes. "It's a raccoon," I said. "It's coming towards us. Do raccoons attack?" he asked, nervously. "Not unless provoked. And I think you're annoying it by shining that light on it." I had no qualms about sleeping twenty feet away from a bunch of raccoons, but Michael couldn't forget about them and asked me more questions. "They like shiny things," I said. "And they're nocturnal. They don't really do anything to humans, so stop worrying."


Mt. Rainier


The cold dance that appears after posing for a lot of pictures

Mt. St. Helens from Johnston Ridge


Day 9: Though I slept well, Michael apparently dreamt that a raccoon slashed through the tent with its claws. We marveled at all the amenities KOA offers, but had no time to enjoy them. At Cannon Beach, I was careful not to get my recovering-from-ingrown-toenail-surgery toes wet, but as I ran towards a plethora of birds, I got sand in my toes. Upon arriving in Portland, we found a restaurant on Yelp and had a delicious tuna sandwich with soup and then a piece of blueberry pie served up by a lovely, quirky woman, who gave us a free peanut butter cookie on the way out. We toured the Pittock Mansion, drove through the Alberta Arts and Pearl Districts, and randomly found a store that I feel like must have been featured on one of the many design blogs I read: Noun: A Person's Place for Things. It was full of lovely items and I wished that my mom and sister could have been there. We enjoyed looking at the charming Belmont/Sunnyside area houses, laughed at the hippy places we saw (I even saw a billboard that I unfortunately didn't get a picture of: "End petlessness!"), saw the entire Portland Art Museum in an hour, ate some of the best sushi I've ever had for dinner, and visited the Portland Temple. Finally, we drove an hour south to reach a KOA, where this time there were bunnies hopping around--more Michael's style.






Day 10: We started out the day by buying a toothbrush and hydrogen peroxide, and then Michael, in an act of purely selfless charity, scrubbed the sand out of my toe wounds. We got off the freeway to find a few covered bridges, then got right back on to head back out to the coast. When we stopped for lunch in Charleston/Coos Bay, it took us a while to find a place that didn't look kind of iffy. If you like antiques, head there. We wandered through enormous warehouse-sized antique stores and drove past what seemed like hundreds of them after finding tomato bisque and a panini at a Christian cafe. We stopped for some Oregon jam and then again every ten minutes once we reached the road that offers amazing views of the coast (starting at Port Orford). Upon reaching the national park campground near Crescent City, we read a sign saying, "This is bear country. By law, you are required to have bear-safe food containers." When we saw the prices for camping there, we decided to try a nearby KOA, where we were both relieved to see nothing about bears upon checking in.





Day 11: This morning, we left the earliest we had and drove through huge redwood forests to get back to Oregon. The lodge by the Oregon Caves Monument was nestled in a most picturesque place surrounded by fall colors. I even felt sorry for people who had only ever been there in summer. A geologist named Derek gave four of us a 1.5-hour tour of the cave. I was surprised to get really great answers to the many questions I asked while Michael took pictures with the last camera with remaining battery life--his iPhone. Then on to Berkeley for dinner at Cioccolata Di Vino. (AMAZING.)








I tend to take pictures of things that remind me of people I know, so look through the entire album for those.

Oh, and this little illegal immigrant (we named him Alouette and then switched to Pierre) hitched a ride with us from British Columbia all the way to California, where he hopefully found a new home somewhere in Michael's front yard: