A Year About

A two-story bike next to the Ben & Jerry’s line. I guess the advantage is it gives you a good view over the traffic. Mounting and dismounting are slightly more complicated than normal.

We took time yesterday to catch up on chores: laundry, gas, groceries. We still have a few more things to take care of in the next few days. I discovered that the little knob that opens the bathroom window is broken. A tiny tab has broken off. We will stop at the Airstream dealer in Eugene on our way south and have them take a look and fix it.


Danine shows Cibyl and Ed her ice cream licking technique while we wait in line.


William (age unknown) is either discussing ice cream flavors, a new metaphysical theory, or bodily functions.

We got over to Ed and Cibyl’s around 4:00 p.m. and enjoyed a pasta dinner. But that was just a warm-up for the main course: Free cones at Ben & Jerry’s. We piled into two cars and drove across town, passing by, Danine and I noticed, some really lovely neighborhoods. The line was down the block a bit. However, it moved steadily. The Ben & Jerry’s scooper team was very efficient. By the time we got there they were out of Half Baked, so I settled for Coconut Seven Layer Bar. Mmm. The best part about picking an ice cream flavor is that you can’t go wrong. Everybody was quiet — even William and his friend Liam, sort of — while we walked down the block eating our cones.

On our way home we drove along old Route 30 and previewed some of the waterfalls in the deep twilight.

Our site at Ainsworth SP.

Based on the information in the visitor center, the eruption of Mount Saint Helens (or Mt. Saint Helens or Mount St. Helens or Mt. St. Hlns.) was a cataclysmic event for Washington and Oregon. Based on the view from the visitor center — the one run by Washington state parks and only five miles from I-5 — Mount Saint Helens doesn’t exist. We never saw it. Just clouds. Still, I’m pretty sure it was an actual event.

The visitor center presents an elaborate timeline leading up to the eruption on May 18, 1980, and its aftermath. The magnitude of the eruption was hard to fathom. Seeing photos and video of the entire side of a 9,000 ft mountain slide like a collapsing sand castle, was hard to believe — even staring at it over and over. It was a tragedy and a trauma for many people. How could such a massive disaster be otherwise? But the emergency response and efforts at rescue and rebuilding were also impressive.

After walking through the timeline I came upon a shocking little display. It had little volcanoes mounted on a platform. Each had a famous name and year of eruption printed in front of it: Mt. Saint Helens, Krakatoa, Mazama and others. Above each little volcano was a gray plexi-glass cloud. The size of the cloud corresponded to the volume of ash and pumice produced by that volcano. The 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens was, by far, the smallest. All of the others mentioned were far larger, and the eruption of Mount Mazama in about 5700 BC, which created Crater Lake, was at least ten times larger. This would have been, to use the geo-scientific terminology for such an event, no picnic.

Our next goal for the day was a-washin’ for the rig. Long have we wanted to take the trailer to a Blue Beacon truck wash. The last time was way back in San Antonio. They are, naturally, placed by interstates. We haven’t been by the interstate for a long time (gloriously). The rain of the northwest has done a good job cleaning off the grime on the top of truck and trailer, but not the sides and not the nooks and crannies. Now the nooks and crannies are clean too. Of course, it rained on the drive to the campground — but the Airstream is still clean!


A walk through the woods at Ainsworth.

We are parked in the Columbia River gorge at Ainsworth SP. It is woodsy, wet and quiet. We like it quite a lot. The drive along I-84 was distracting because of the series of waterfalls pouring off the cliffs. From the campground it is a short drive to the impressive Multnomah Falls and about a dozen others. We’ll do a tour of them at some point this week.



We drove into the city to have dinner with my brother Ed, his wife Cibyl, and their kids, Emma (15), Jeremy (12), and William (age unknown). We had tostadas! De-lish. Emma pulled out her American Girl dolls and toy horses for Elise and the rest of us chatted and caught up. It is always good to see family!

Bobby alluded to this in an earlier post, but I thought I would add my thoughts.

Our pastor asked me in an email a month or so ago if I was anxious and ready to get home, having been on the road for over six months. I answered that I was looking forward to being home, but not necessarily anxious to get there. I told him that I didn’t feel like we’d been gone that long, but that I knew things would be starting to end when we got up to Washington and then turned around. That happened today.

I realized, as we were driving away from Port Angeles this morning, that we have gone as far away from home as we are going to go. From here on out, every place we go will be slowly bringing us closer to home. We still have plenty of places to go, mind you. We’ll be visiting five national parks in the next month and a half. But each spot takes us slowly east.

No more tide pools, oceans or lighthouses. I love all three. I’ve told you this before, but I could sit next to a tide pool for hours, watching the goings-on and never get bored. I find incredible peace in the small movements in there. I think lighthouses are incredibly romantic. They are sentinels on the coast, out there to protect ships, their sailors and their cargo. I have always wanted to live in a lighthouse on the coast, and I will miss seeing them.

We aren’t going to drive Highway 101 again, either. We have been driving on that road since the beginning of March and today, when we drove through Olympia, it ended. No big fanfare or signs, just a merge on to I-5. 101 takes you along the coast of California and Oregon and around Washington’s Olympic Penisula. It’s the road to be on when you want to see the coast and the small towns that populate it. Convenience-wise, it’s great to be on an interstate again, but I’ll miss the charm 101 has.

We’ve been on this trip for almost eight months although it doesn’t seem like it. And not until now have I thought about this trip actually ending. I knew it was going to, of course. But for the past eight months, all I have thought about is the trip — where we’re going, where I’m shopping and doing laundry, when we are having school. It’s time to adjust the focus a little, even broaden it perhaps. To getting back to Northern Virginia. To eventually finding a new home.

Another friend emailed this week and said that she is trying to prepare for the day we are no longer blogging, safe back at home and Airstream-less. She asked us to think about how we were going to prepare others like her who have probably spent more time than they should (!) following our adventures. I guess this is how. Sharing with you the small (and not so small) things we realize are not going to happen again during this trip. Maybe if we deal with one thing at a time, we’ll all be ready at the end of July.

To get to the dump station at Salt Creek, you have to drive through two of these WWII bunkers. Why? Is mystery.

Over the past week we have basically executed a very large, slow u-turn round the Olympic peninsula and have pointed ourselves south once again. After hitching up and dumping our tanks in a World War II bunker, because, you know, that’s pretty routine… We took one short detour north to Port Townsend, which is an attractive little town with old victorian storefronts by the water.



We arrived in Port Townsend right at lunch time and parked outside of town at their little bus station. The shuttle to the middle of town runs every 20 minutes, costs $1.25 per person (good all day), and takes no time at all. In fact, we had just enough time on the bus to look through the booklet of menus for the various restaurants nearby.

Based on menu and character (on paper), we chose The Belmont. It’s in an old 1880s building and seemed to have an interesting variety of soups and sandwiches. When we walked, in three ladies were waiting for the hostess to return. We waited too. Soon another group of four came in and called for assistance. The hostess returned, but didn’t know who was first. We indicated the three ladies and she showed them in. After some time she returned — unhurried — and immediately showed the party of four to a table. I was irked, but figured she still didn’t realize who came in first. We debated about leaving since this didn’t give us confidence that the service would be any faster. We waited. She came back. “Can you wait five minutes?” she said. I think we’d already waited ten! We said, “No,” and left.



The upside is we ended up at the Nifty Fifties Soda Fountain. It’s downtown too, and is done up in chrome and pink with the little table top juke boxes — everything you’d expect. They serve lots of old-timey drinks: phosphates, egg creams, malts, floats, and shakes. Danine and I had pretty good burgers and Elise had an excellent, just-like-mom’s grilled cheese. I had a hot fudge milk shake, Elise had a creamy butterscotch shake, and Danine a “black cow” or root beer float. All were delicious.

We wandered about town, saw the smallest state park in Washington, popped into a toy store, and two — yes two — bookstores. We bought more books. The trick is to store them low and evenly in the trailer so it doesn’t list to either side and so the tires wear evenly.


This is a complete view of Washington’s smallest state park. Its name is too short to mention.

As we continued our drive, finally turning south for good, the temperature rose to a balmy 51 Fahrenheit. That’s the warmest we’ve had on the peninsula! We soon found ourselves — for the first time since LA — back on I-5. It has two lanes in each direction, exit ramps, rest stops, and lots of ugly big box stores dotting the way. Route 101, wooded and winding and pleasantly slow, as well as the Pacific Ocean are behind us.

To further shock our systems, we are overnighting at a Wal-Mart. There’s a semi tractor next to us with its engine rumbling. I can hear the high school kids peel out as they leave the parking lot. The glow of Quiznos and Starbucks reflects on our rainy Airstream. Back to Civilization. Now that I think of it, the Hoh Rain Forest really wasn’t all that cold…

Our drive tomorrow should be only two hours or so. We’ll continue south on I-5, stopping at the Mount Saint Helen’s visitor center to check it out, and then cross the Columbia River back into Oregon. We plan to stay at Ainsworth SP, just a little west up the gorge from Portland. From there we’ll tour the gorge and the city, and visit my brother Ed and his family until we’ve worn out our welcome.

Saturday was Junior Ranger day in the National Parks. So we decided to stay an extra day and go back to the Olympic NP visitors’ center for the festivities. The place was positively hopping. We had considered stopping by on our way out of town. If we had, we’d have found no place to park our rig — the lot was full.


Elise works on her bird mobile. Look carefully. Can you spot the entirely camouflaged family?

The would-be Jr. Rangers had to complete five of nine activities listed on a little card. Elise began her quest by making a bird mobile. Then we walked through the woods with a ranger looking for things that don’t belong in the forest: for example, Scooby Doo in purple car lodged in a tree. After this she hung out with an entomologist as she focused a microscope on various petri dishes to show…common, everyday, backyard bugs! We saw countless ittle bugs, made big on a television screen: little mites, big mites, translucent mites, beetles smaller than half of a grain of rice, lethargic millipedes, and frenetic centipedes.


Bugs made big

Lastly, Elise completed the scavenger hunt around the visitor center and turned in her card and her work. She pledged herself to a life of poverty, celibacy, and alms-giving — oh wait, that’s the Order of Friars Minor. Anyway, she came away with a very fine patch, certificate and pin.

We went to the vigil Mass at Queen of Angels Catholic Church and headed back home. Since this would be our last time in a long while to do any tidepooling, we went out in the dying light anyway and scrambled about. We saw little, sandpapery sea stars, a little sea slug, anemones, barnacles and mussels of course, and tons of little crabs — hermit and otherwise. Danine and Elise scoured a small beach made entirely of shells and found many beautiful limpet shells. The best find was by Elise. She found two mossy chiton shells. We’ve been trying to find these little guys alive, but no luck. It was nice to put a face — or shell — to the name finally.

As we got ready to leave, Elise shouted, “Seal!” We looked out at the water just beyond the rocks, but didn’t see any seal. What we saw were two otters lazily swimming and diving along the shore. It was a treat to watch them go, and nice way to end our time here.




That’s Dan Lieberman. He sings songs about the forest.

I promise this is a real picture. We are not standing in front of a back drop.

To our great relief and delight, the road to Hurricane Ridge was open today. Hurricane Ridge (named for the force of the wind that comes through in the winter time) takes you from the town of Port Angeles to almost 6,000 feet. They were reporting a temperature of 20 degrees Fahrenheit and 130 inches of snow. Elise was expecting to build snowmen — Bobby and I were just hoping to not freeze the instant we got out of the truck.


We stopped to take a picture on the way up. Elise leaned out to feel the air temperature.

We were told that we had to have snow tires or all-season tires on our vehicle and the signs told us that snow tires were required past the 12 mile marker. I was surprised, therefore, to see absolutely no snow on the road. I had also heard that there was a possibility of more snow in the mountains today, so I think the snow tire requirement was a precaution. A smart one, too.


The visitor center at Hurricane Ridge.

Hurricane Ridge Road is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday right now during the off season. Opening up a road like this is no easy task after there has been a significant snow. First the park service plows the roads. Next, the park police come up and check the road conditions. Finally, an avalanche team comes up and surveys the possibility and probability of an avalanche. Apparently last week they were all ready to open it and had to close it at the last minute as more snow came into the area.


Posted at the visitor center.

The first part of the drive was fairly mundane but as we got higher, the views just kept getting more and more spectacular. It really was like being on another planet. We felt like we had been transported to the Alps. We saw ridge after ridge of snow-covered mountains, each more beautiful than the last. There are 60 glaciers in Olympic National Park and we were looking at some today. I’ve never seen a glacier in person before and the ones I saw were across a very big valley, but there they were.


We’re pretty sure the depressed area on the right between the peaks is a glacier.

We drove to the visitor center which is at the end of the paved road. In the summer (after July 4th, usually), there is an unpaved 8-mile road you can drive to get your best “through the windshield” look at Mount Olympus. That road is currently under about 10 feet of snow, so instead of driving on it, we walked on top of it.


This cave was in the 15-foot high drifts made by the gigantic snow blowers they use up here.

The silence was total once we got into the woods. When we paused to listen all we could hear were the plops from the snow falling off the trees. Elise found plenty of snow to eat. Apparently, the taste of snow reminds Elise of me. She says it must be that I smell like fresh snow tastes. I liked that comparison.



We walked until our shoes were good and wet. We were in just our fleeces and hats, although we had brought our winter jackets. It was 28 degrees when we got to the visitor center, but the sun was so strong, we were plenty warm. There was no wind and that made a huge difference.



Toward the end of the walk, Elise was walking in a bowl of snow made by the wind and the trees. Some of the snow felt especially soft and Elise said, “This is what Santa’s beard is made of.”


Elise in the bowl.

We have decided to skip Seattle in the interest of saving a little cash money. We were hoping to go to Mt. Ranier National Park but the only campground that is open there year round was washed away in a flood in November 2006. So we’ll skip that. I’m glad we checked their website today! Instead, we will meander down toward Portland and probably get there Monday or Tuesday. Bobby’s brother Ed lives there with his wife and three children, so we’ll be sure to terrorize them plenty. I think we’re staying in a Wal-Mart Sunday night, so you probably won’t hear from us until Monday. Hope you’re having a great weekend!

A bouncy bridge to get us across the creek.

Considering how much annual precipitation Olympic National Park gets every year, — Mount Olympus (at 7,980 feet) receives 200 inches a year — it should come as no surprise that our day today was very water-oriented.

We started at the visitor center which was actually open today. This is the first national park we have visited that has had a lot closed due to the season/weather and we were surprised on Tuesday when we tried to visit the main visitor center for the park only to find that it was closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.



We got there soon after it opened and asked right away about their Junior Ranger program. We got the packet and found out that this Saturday is National Junior Ranger Day at all the national parks! There will be all kinds of activities here at Olympic from 10-3. We have decided to stay an extra day so that Elise can participate. This visitor center has a neat Discovery Room just for kids and we spent a lot of time in there investigating animal skulls and rocks and creating a “run” for the salmon so they could successfully navigate upstream to lay their eggs.

We finally got out the door and headed west for our first adventure of the day — hiking to Marymere Falls. The trail was 1.75 miles round trip on a pretty easy path through the lowland forest. Almost immediately we came upon a black-tailed deer munching grass on the side of the path.


Olympic National Park deer have talent — they ride bikes!

Once we got past her, Elise took off down the path and stayed ahead of us most of the time. Her imagination just takes off when we go on walks like this and she was playing some game or another, completely content.



It didn’t take long to get to the 90-foot waterfall. We haven’t seen a good one since the partially frozen one we saw in New Hampshire December 2006. We enjoyed it for a while and then headed back. Along the way Elise couldn’t resist, and Bobby became the recipient of a few snowballs on the back since there were piles of the stuff along the way.


At the top of the waterfall there is a tree about to come over the edge.


Checking out the falls.

From there, we headed to the Sol Duc Hot Springs. We were hoping the setting would be a fairly natural one like Big Bend, but discovered that a resort had been built up near the springs. The springs occur somewhere in the mountains nearby and are piped in to three different pools. They are the Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear of hot springs pools. One pool is too hot (Papa Bear), one is too cold (the one that is not heated at all and was only 50 degrees! — Mama Bear) and one is just right (Baby Bear). We all tried the cold pool which was a complete shock to the system. It hurt so much! There were about 15 people there today and that seemed plenty to me, but as Bobby and I looked around we realized it must get very busy in the summertime. There are three lifeguard chairs in the pool area! We were very glad we came in the off-season.


Elise, the Sherpa, carrying the backpack while sporting her new hat.


These hot springs were long used by native peoples due to their comfortable, naturally occurring concrete steps and pretty tile work, as well as their naturally occurring indoor plumbing providing hot showers afterward.

We spent about an hour in the pools and finally got out when we were too light-headed to think clearly. Showers taken, we headed home to eat the beef stew Bobby had started in the crock pot this morning. Everyone has been drained by the heat (and sulfur!) of the water, so it is bedtime for ev…e…r…y…o…


This is Lake Crescent. The water has very little nitrogen in it so very little algae grows. The water is a beautiful color and very clear.

Today was the international portion of our trip. We got up early to drive into Port Angeles and catch the 8:20 ferry to Victoria, BC. We dropped the truck off at a local shop for an oil and filter change beforehand and picked it when we got back at 5:30pm. The inbetween time we spent walking the streets of a really pretty city.



We wandered in front of parliament and The Empress Hotel before heading several blocks to Craigdarroch Castle. It’s not a real castle. It’s another vanity mansion built by a coal magnate at the end of the 19th century. Visiting the vanity mansions of incredibly wealthy magnates is now an official sub-theme of our trip. This makes the fourth we’ve seen. Like the others it was pretty elaborate — more on par with Fulton Mansion in size, but more ornate. It sits on a hill in beautiful neighborhood overlooking the city.





The only danger with walking to the mansion was the proliferation of used bookstores along the way. We stopped in one outbound and two inbound. Danine got another Adriana Trigiani book, which she just finished. Sheesh. I got two short story collections, one by — you guessed it — Italo Calvino and a big cheap Hemingway collection. As the store clerk said to me, Calvino is good times.


The now extinct two dimensional polar bear

We ate lunch at The Blue Fox Cafe: soup and Moroccan quesadillas for me (great), curry chicken burger for Danine (good), and french toast for Elise (okay). I win! Somewhat slowed by our meal we wandered aimlessly, eventually finding ourselves in the rose gardens beside the Empress. There we relaxed until it was time to mosey back to the ferry. Man, the day went fast.

Back home Danine read her book — did I mention she already finished it? Sheesh. Elise and I went for a walk through the park past a rather tame group of five does to another path leading to more tidepools. These were great and we’ll have to go back. I saw a new kind of sea star that I haven’t identified yet. All the while, Elise and I talked about the Guinness Book of World Records. She wanted to know what types of records it had and who and how they were made and recorded, etc. I think she’s angling for one herself, but hasn’t decided which to go for. Probably most sugar consumed per pound of body weight in a single day… or most hours spent listening to audiobooks in a year (104,655 so far, I think).

I’ve had an assortment of thoughts that I hadn’t bothered to include in the blog or otherwise mention. I don’t intend to organize them in any coherent way, so here they are, a Whitman’s Sampler of observations.

A) The Hoh Rain Forest is an incredible place (I said as much before). What’s incredible is the abundance of life crammed into every soggy square yard. By comparison, the redwood forests were orderly (yet they were not). The rain forest is pure chaos. Every branch is crooked. Every horizontal surface, and half the vertical ones, are covered with moss, lichens, and ferns. The moss drapes so heavily on the maples you can’t believe they can survive. But they do, because everything thrives in the rain forest. There is no bare earth (unless it was exposed yesterday). When a tree falls, it quickly begins to rot. From it grow new saplings. This happens so often that many of the trees appear to have sprouted in mid-air, with the trunk beginning to rise at about four feet off the ground and roots descending like gnarled legs down from the same point. This is because the nurse trees have long since rotted away and only the next generation of trees are left. You can find long colonnades of massive trees, all of which had sprouted along the fallen trunk of nurse tree.

B) When we started this trip it was fall and everything seemed open, uncrowded and available to be explored. We didn’t plan too far ahead so our journey would develop organically and not feel regimented. That approach served us well all through the winter, but now things are warming up and the places we still have not seen include some of the most popular parks in the country: Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion, Yellowstone. I have been thinking of our trip as happening in a kind of perpetual off-season, but not any more. We are timing our visit to those parks right as the season gets into full swing. In short, the campgrounds are full. To get into those places you have to book way in advance. Zion’s reservable campground is full. All of Yosemite’s many campgrounds are full or have only one night available for a trailer our size. This means we’ll need to find a private campground relatively close by. While private campgrounds have hookups and WiFi and laundry, they don’t have location, location, location, or much beauty. We’ve already booked the closest one to Zion for our time there. So we’ll scramble a little, but it’ll work out.

C) I do actually keep a budget for the trip, but my engineering friends would find it much too crude — no multi-page spreadsheets or fancy algorithms unless you count sums and averages. To date we’ve spent $4,470.06 on gas. I think that’s pretty good. We’ve spent $242.50 on laundry and $271.39 on propane. So we spend almost as much cleaning our clothes as we do cooking our food and keeping ourselves warm. We average about $650 per month on camping fees. This varies widely month-to-month: February was low because we spent a week with the Luhrs (Thank you, Luhrs!); March was outrageously high because we stayed in relatively nice private campgrounds in Carmel and San Francisco. The average is only five bucks higher than I estimated, though.



D) I finally kicked the disaster story habit for my trip reading. Although I have one I’m itching to start by William Golding called Pincher Martin, and I skimmed the recent personal account by one of the survivors of that plane crash in the Andes back in the ’70s. (Remember the movie/book Alive?) Other than that, I’ve been reading an interesting defense of Judeo-Christian belief against scientific materialism by a particle physicist. I’ve also learned a fair bit of modern physics in the process. I’m reading Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. His observations and encounters are excellent and it’s a book about a year about. Both of those books are borrowed from Charles (San Diego) and Mark (Houston) respectively. I’m rereading Thoreau’s essays in my new fancy Library of America copy. I have about a half dozen other books, either used or borrowed, sitting in my little closet waiting their turn. It’ll be more after we visit Powell’s in Portland.

E) I’m trying not to be irritated by the lingering winter we are experiencing in Washington because I know that in less than a month we’ll be driving into Death Valley. Snow on the trailer will seem like such a good idea then!

F) The two most universal birds I’ve noticed during our travels have been robins and crows. At first I ignored them because they aren’t exotic or at least not exotic to me. Now I really like to see them and I’m impressed by their versatility. I should admit that crows and ravens are my favorite birds. I like them because they’re so clever, and do some things just for fun.

G) From the moment Elise got up today, she looked old. She looked like she was nine or so. She’s been growing a lot, we’ve noticed. Oh, she’s still tiny, but now she’s a bigger tiny. That surprises us and makes us want to appreciate the kid-stuff more — and it makes us extra glad we took this year.

I am warm again. I was warm last night when I finally got into bed, but since I popped out of said bed this morning to take pictures of the snow, I have been cold. My feet, especially. I have terrible circulation in my hands and feet, always exacerbated by the cold.



Bobby took his walk this morning while Elise and I worked on school. He had a great journey through the rain (snow?) forest and took lots of pictures of a downy woodpecker foraging on the forest floor. By the time he got back, the snow had melted, Elise and I were almost done with school and it was time to go.



Our 2 1/2 hour trip around the western side of the Olympic Peninsula was fairly uneventful. The temperature outside ranged from 42 degrees to a nail-biting 32 degrees, with periods of rain and sleet. Driving the windy Lake Crescent road, the temperature hit 32 degrees and I nervously watched the wet pavement for signs of ice. Luckily, the ground was warmer than the air, and we arrived at Salt Creek Recreation Area completely intact.



Salt Creek is a gorgeous park. It is on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with Canada across the water. We have water and electric here so the first thing I did when we arrived was turn on the heat pump! I’m such a lightweight.

The playground here is top notch so Elise dragged us over straight away for several rounds of Don’t Touch the Ground Tag. We took a short break to investigate the tide pools. It wasn’t low tide, but we have a feeling they are going to be great. We could see anemones, hermit crabs, barnacles, fish and mussels. Hopefully we’ll see some sea stars when we check the pools at low tide later this week.

Tomorrow will be a catch up day of sorts. We’ll head into Port Angeles to do some laundry, post these entries, get groceries, check in at the National Park visitor center and see about taking the ferry to Victoria later in the week.