10 July 2012

First stop, Bullseye Glass, where I bought some different special blend small pieces of glass.  I showed great restraint, mostly because I was space constrained.  After Bullseye, we drove the Columbia River route on the Oregon side all the way from Portland to Astoria.  Along the way we stopped at Gnat Creek Fish Hatchery.  The fishery had small Chinook salmons, large rainbow trout, and a very large sturgeon.

Roger had been to Astoria in 1996 on ship, so there wasn’t a lot we wanted to see.  We did stop at the Oregon Visitors Center and got information on the Lewis and Clark Trail and National Park.  We stopped at a replica of Fort Clatsop, which was the wintering fort for Lewis and Clark from early December 1805 until March 1806.  The Corps of Discovery had 33 people during the winter-over, leadership in Captains Lewis and Clark, 3 sergeants, 1 male French translator, Sacagawea, and their infant son, York (who was Clark’s slave), and 22 Army enlisted troops.  The hard part of the trip started in St Louis, went north as far as they could on the Missouri River, took one month to make an 18 mile by-pass of the Great Falls of the Missouri, followed by land transit across the “Stony (Rocky) Mountains” to the head waters of the Snake River, down to the Columbia River and finally the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River.  Once they spent the winter at Fort Clatsop (named in honor of the Clatsop Indians who were crucial in the Corps’ survival) they had to get back to St Louis.  [It is interesting to note that the town of Astoria was founded only 5 years after Lewis and Clark made it back east.  Then the Pacific whaling industry took off.]

Troop rooms, based upon the journals of Lewis and Clark. 

The shared officer's room of Lewis and Clark.

We’re spending the night south of Seaside, Oregon.  The marine layer has started to come in and reminded me why I didn’t like living on the Pacific coast.  It is chilly now, and we’re debating whether to wear long pants tomorrow or not.  The weather report has Seaside having a high of 68 degrees, with the marine layer burning off afternoon.

9 July 2012

Departed Everett WA for Seattle around 8:15 am.  Got to downtown Seattle around 9 and had a good address for RV parking within a reasonable walk to Pike’s market.  Here are the market pictures.  I bought some fresh produce from one of the stalls.  A homegrown tomato tastes so good.  Of course it reminded us a lot of Fisherman Wharf's market in SF.

 Roger is enjoying a huge sticky cinnamon roll.

We then walked down to Pioneer’s Square.  Not much to see early in the morning other than the folks just leaving the charity mission.  The park was just filling up with panhandlers staking their regular bench claim.

We finished downtown Seattle about 11 and headed to Mt. Rainer National Park.  We got lucky in that the morning fog had just burnt off enough and the clouds hadn’t grown yet around the 14,000+ peak. 

We drove the circumference of the park and then headed towards Yakima WA.  The Yakima river valley is another prime produce region.  Of course we bought some Rainer cherries.  The valley reminded us a lot of the Salinas valley, but with orchards.  It was still very dry looking with tall brown hills flanking both sides. 

We then headed towards the Columbia River gorge. 

 It was very windy, to the point that the waves were going counter to the river current.  We stopped at Multnomah Falls.  Roger had seen the falls in 1996, when he did the Rose Festival cruise on the USS Puller.  The falls hadn’t changed much, according to Roger’s memory.

We stopped outside of Portland.  Tomorrow I want to go to Bullseye glass, to see how the fuseable glass is made.  Then on northwest up the Columbia River to Austoria, where the Columbia meets the Pacific.  We’ve listened to several audiobooks, so we know the journey of Lewis and Clark quite well.

8 July 2012

Drove about 2 1/2 hours over to Everett WA.  Why?  To go to Boeing and do a factory tour.  The tours are run 7 days a week.  We sort of saw the production lines for the current model of the 747, 777 and 787.  By sort of, we saw parts of the planes in the world's largest free standing building, but there wasn't much production going on because the line doesn't run on weekends.  The plant runs 3 shifts 5 days a week, employing over 35,000 people a shift!  A skeleton crew is on site on the weekends.  If there's a need for a troubleshooting team, that kind of work gets done on the weekend.

No cameras, cellphones, or electronic devices are allowed inside the fence of Boeing.  So the pictures below are of the production line hanger (on the left side of the picture) with the painting hangers (on the right side.) 

Paint adds weight, so the paint scheme of an airplane is a very debated subject.  The 787 plane has a carbon composite body and is considerably lighter than other planes currently under construction.  United/Continental is currently the only US carrier under contract, but there are a lot of overseas orders. All the planes we saw under construction were overseas orders.

The planes in the below picture are completed planes waiting for final testing and delivery.

It was decided that we weren't going much further today, because we want to go into Seattle tomorrow.  Roger just finished removing all the splattered bugs off the windshield.  Now I have the sheets and laundry to do.  While the machines are busy doing the hard work, we'll be planning on where to go tomorrow.

7 July 2012

Today we left Port Angeles and went to three sites in Olympic National Park.  The first location was Hurricane Ridge, which overlooks the Olympic mountains and is at an elevation about a mile above sea level.  There is still snow on several of the longer hiking trails, so we didn’t hike as much as we wanted at this location.  Once again we found blue lupine in bloom.

Our second stop was at Sol Duc, which is classified as coastal forest.  Most of the trails were along the various campgrounds, and there wasn’t a lot of parking.  We walked to see the Sol Duc salmon cascade.  We didn't see any salmon jumping.

We then walked up to Sol Duc falls.  There's no way salmon could jump up this falls.  So it begged the question, where do they spawn?

Our third stop was at Hoh River valley, which is classified as coastal rain forest.  Fortunately it wasn’t raining!  In the Hoh area you can see giant Sitka redwoods and hemlock trees.  The largest cedar tree was over 270 feet tall, 20 feet across, and between 500 to 550 years old. 

 We strolled/hiked about 5.5miles.  Nothing too taxing and we eventually drove on to Hoquiam Washington.  The campground is relatively new, definitely full, and we were lucky with our late arrival the campsite is on the tranquil Hoquiam River.

6 July 2012

Left West Bay Marina in search of a downtown parking space large enough to fit the RV.  Fortunately we were early enough in the morning that we found a lot and scored two spaces.  Once we abandoned the RV, we walked around downtown Victoria.   Outside of the Royal BC Museum is a recently renovated totem park.  There were about a dozen poles, plus there were some house poles in the windows of the museum.  It is fascinating to read the stories each pole tells, and how the raven, orca, eagle and people figures have a different role depending upon the First Nation society. 

We did some street strolling, meandering in and out of various tourist stores.  I found a birthday present for Aaron, but nothing else.  We had lunch and on the way back to get the RV for our ferry trip, there was a street performer doing magic down in the wharf area.  Unfortunately we only caught the last 5 minutes of his act.  What we saw was good, particularly his crowd banter.  He made a funny crack about children not doing this at home.

Waiting is skill that must be learned and mastered.  Regrettably Roger and I aren’t very good at it.  We had to be at the ferry by 1:30 to wait for our customs inspection.  The ferry didn’t leave until 3.  Once the inspection was over, we then had to wait to move the RV aboard and then get permission to leave the RV.  Hurry up and wait.   The ferry was fine until we got into the San Juan channel open water, then it did a slow roll back and forth.  There were a few people green around the gills.  Port Angeles is a small town and we’re at the KOA for the night, because it was convenient to Olympic National Park.  Tomorrow if the weather holds we plan on going into the park and doing some hiking.  The below picture is what we can see from our campsite, still some snow on the ridge.

5 July 2012

Onward to Victoria.  We left Branbury (Vancouver “suburb”) to go to Tsawwassen (in greater Vancouver) for the 10:00 BC Ferry over to Vancouver Island through the Gulf Islands waterway.  Roger and I were both amazed at how efficient loading and unloading went.  We drove on to the main deck, with cars also being loaded above via a sky ramp.  It took 90 minutes to make the transit from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay.

 

On the ferry, we sat across from a very spry 83 y/o lady, Sophia.  Sophia’s husband died 8 years ago and so she now lives in Victoria.  She always wanted to retire to Victoria, but her husband didn’t want to so since his retirement they had lived in Ottawa.  Sophia was on her return trip from Newfoundland, where she was visiting older family members.  She left Newfoundland when she joined the Navy.  She had to quit the Navy when she got married, because back then it wasn’t allowed.  Her husband was career Air Force.  Anyway earlier this year she had bypass surgery and now is the proud owner of a cow valve that replaced her worn out heart valve.  Sophia told us that this replacement was pioneered in the USA.  I asked her if she now likes to take her coffee with cream and she laughed.  Sophia flew to Newfoundland and was finishing a land cross country trek, by herself, across Canada which was something she always wanted to do.  So her trip was definitely a planes, trains, bus and car adventure.  She told us that she had a wonderful time and adventure.  She told her children that they would only her from her if there was a problem.  This she said was rather liberating, because it meant she wasn’t tethered to a cellphone or computer.  Sophia was a lovely lady to chat with.

When we arrived on Vancouver Island we headed to Butchart Gardens.  We spent about 2 hours with over 10 busloads of our closest oriental friends.  Herding our way through the various walkways, dodging people who would stop with no warning to take a picture, it was pretty, stressful, and not terribly relaxing despite all the wonderful spring flowers that were in bloom.  Some cultures do not share our concept of personal space.  Butchart Gardens has seven unique areas:  the Sunken Garden which was built in the old quarry, a Rose Garden that had a heady fragrance despite every rose I smelled not having any smell, a Japanese Garden, a Star Pond area, an Italian Garden with piazza, and Mediterranean Garden.  Roger and I enjoyed the flowers, but not the throngs of people.  We got spoiled with all the gardens we visited in England and New Zealand that weren’t crowded with busloads of people.  I’ve picked a few of the choice flower pictures to share with you.

Afterwards we drove on to West Bay Marine RV park.  We found out today that 1 July officially starts the summer holiday period for Canadians.  This means that on the weekends RV parks are always full, especially at the highly desirable tourist destinations such as Victoria.  We got lucky and got the second to last spot at the RV park.  Tomorrow there aren’t any empty spaces, so we’ll be leaving to go to Port Angeles, Washington.  We set up camp and unloaded our bicycles.  We rode into Victoria and were both glad we had parked the RV.  Victoria was crowded, but is a very bicycle friendly place.  Lots of folks were out riding, both as a means of transportation and also as a form of exercise.  We rode to the US ferry company location to figure out how to take the ferry back to the USA.  Then we rode down Government to see the provincial parliament buildings and the marina. 

 The last two pictures are of floating houses on the marina, which the campground is adjacent to.  Prices start at $150K and go to over $750K.  You also only sign a long term lease on the waterfront "property", in other words you own the house but not the water underneath it.

We did some information asking about things to do tomorrow, as we don’t have to be at the ferry dock until 1:30 pm to clear US customs for a 3:00 pm departure. 

4 July 2012

Happy Independence Day!

No rain today!  As I write this, I can’t see a cloud in the sky.  It’s 68 degrees and sunny, hip-hip hooray!

We spent our 4^th walking around Vancouver.  First off, Vancouver is a very commuter friendly city.    At the campground we bought day transit passes, which allows use of the metro and all buses for $9/day after rush hour.  We walked about 10 minutes from the campground to the metro and then rode downtown to the waterfront.  From there we went to Gastown, which is one of the earliest parts of downtown.  There’s a famous steam powered clock that we had to see and you can see I was having my morning Starbuck’s in honor of Lynda as well.  I stopped in a jewelry store that had ammolite.  Not knowing anything about ammolite, and the saleslady not being busy, I got instructed on this stone.   Basically, it’s the Canadian version of opal.  It’s a soft stone that’s found in big rocks like opal and is mined solely in Canada.  It has a rainbow color sort of like an opaque tourmaline, and is a soft stone.  Needless to say because it is a soft stone I didn’t buy any.  However I did get a picture of the second largest ammolite stone ever found in Canada.  The saleslady said the stone is priceless and was not for sale.

Next we walked over to Chinatown.  Vancouver has the second largest Chinese population in North America, only behind San Francisco.  The Chinese gate was dedicated in 2002 with sponsorship by the local Chinese Canadian community.  From there we walked to Dr. Sun Yat Sin’s Chinese Garden.  We went into the free section of the garden.  We didn’t feel the need for tea in the pay section, and the claim to fame is that all the parts used in construction were imported from China.  (Of course this left me wondering what the big deal is with Chinese imports, have they been to Walmart lately?)

Then we headed to W. Pender St to catch a bus to Stanley Park, which is a very large park on the tip of continental Vancouver and from where you can see North Vancouver and Lion’s Gate Bridge which connects the two.  The park is really nice.  It is a lot like Golden Gate Park or Balboa Park.  There are pedestrian walkways that run parallel with bicycle and rollerblade paths.  We walked a lot.  Starting at the crew boat house and ending at the outbound bus pickup.  About a third of the way around, there is a very interesting totem pole park, where all the various Pacific First Nation People have a totem pole with their interpretation of the various deities that their heritage had/has beliefs in.  After that we walked the seawall and along the way we had to stop for ice cream, because Roger was so famished that he desperately needed nourishment (?).

We rode the bus back to Gastown and had an unremarkable late lunch at Steamworks Pub.  Since the food was so-so, we opted not to get dessert there.  Instead we found a unique place to indulge our vices.  Roger got ice cream.  I got chocolate.  Afterwards we headed back to the campground.  We’re now relaxing.  Roger has a recycled copy of a newspaper we picked up on the metro, and I’m occupied writing my entry.  All in all, a great day.